A new survey shows PostgreSQL's performance approaching that of Oracle's and surpassing or on par with MySQL. Also, Lukas Smith talks about an open source catalog which lists close to 300 so called "enterprise ready" OSS applications, Drupal jons the 'GoPHP 5 movement', and the International PHP Conference web site gets a makeover. There's also a host of new releases from the community. Read all about it in this week's news roundup.


OPINIONS & STATISTICS

SPEC Benchmarks PostgreSQL's Performance

A new benchmark published on SPEC shows PostgreSQL's performance approaching that of Oracle's and surpassing or on par with MySQL (however the test-hardwares of the other DB systems are somewhat different). The test was put together by PostgreSQL's core developers working at Sun. They certainly are not unbiased, but this is the first 'real' benchmark with PostgreSQL — according to Josh Berkus's blog. The main difference compared to earlier benchmarks (and anecdotes) seems to be the tuning of PostgreSQL...


ANNOUNCEMENTS

Lukas Smith: Open Source Catalog

Lukas Smith said "Optaros, the company I am working for, released an open source catalog which lists close to 300 so called "enterprise ready" OSS applications. I guess most of you reading my blog are not exactly in the target group as to me it mostly seems to be directed about people that lack deep networking into the various OSS communities. That being said I still think that it might be worth a look, even if its just to blog about how we totally got the rating on a specific piece of software totally wrong. In this updated and web enabled version end users can vote on projects, which is already a first step in the direction of allowing user contributions."...

Syck for PHP goes Beta (in PECL)

A binding to the Syck library. YAML (rhymes with "camel") is a straightforward machine parsable data serialization format designed for human readability and interaction with scripting languages. YAML is optimized for data serialization, configuration settings, log files, Internet messaging and filtering. It is a straightforward machine parsable data serialization format designed for human readability and interaction with scripting languages. YAML is optimized for data serialization, configuration settings, log files, Internet messaging and filtering...

Aejaks For Rapid AJAX Development

Aejaks is a windowing toolkit for rapid development of AJAX-enabled Web applications. It combines the powerful simplicity of the Tcl language with the Java-based Echo2 browser-independent windowing system. Aejaks applications are written in a single scripting language, without need to write any HTML, Javascript, or CSS. It borrows from the Tk windowing system, but is not directly compatible with Tk. It runs on top of any Java Web server, and can make use of any existing Java library...

phpa-norl, a phpa port for Mac OS X and Windows

phpa is an interactive command line shell for PHP by David Phillips. Stefan Fischerländer, usually known as a SEO expert and Perl admirer, has patched phpa for Mac OS X and Windows (the default builds theredo not seem to support a feature required by phpa). The result: phpa-norl. phpa and phpa-norl come with a convenient history feature. Using it is simple: type PHP code as you go, with certain special features: (1) If a line ends with #, phpa/phpa-norl assumes that there is more to come (2) The command h gives you access to the command history, cursor keys let you navigate through it (3) The command q quits the application (though something like die(); also works)...

Drupal Joins 'Go PHP 5' Movement

Drupal has joined hands with the 'Go PHP 5' movement that is pushing for wider PHP 5 adoption. Robert Douglass writes that as of Drupal 7, changes to Drupal which use language features found exclusively in PHP 5.2 will be considered for acceptance into Drupal core. This policy effectively means that Drupal 7 will be incompatible with PHP 4. Robert added that the upcoming Drupal 6 and all current Drupal releases will remain PHP 4-compatible for as long as they are supported. In Drupal 6, contributed Drupal modules and themes may declare their PHP version compatibility. Contributed modules can only be installed on systems that support the required PHP version. This change will allow developers to leverage PHP 5 features without breaking existing Drupal sites. This feature will let Drupal users evaluate the advantages of moving their sites to PHP 5. Although PHP 5 has been deployed and tested in production environments for three years, web hosts have been slow to adopt PHP 5, making it difficult for Drupal and many other PHP projects to fully embrace PHP 5's features. The 'Go PHP 5' consortium of PHP projects have joined together and push for wider PHP 5 adoption. By embracing PHP 5 together, the projects involved in the GoPHP 5 effort are sending a message to web hosts that it is time to embrace PHP's future...


NEW RELEASES

onPHP: Object-oriented Framework

onPHP is an object-oriented framework aimed at rapid development of scalable robust applications with outstanding code reusability level. It also provides code generation tools to save your time, and a PHP extension (module) to save the CPU time of your servers. The latest release is onPHP 0.10.3 in which various performance enhancements were made to the Cache package and related classes. Several bugfixes and features (like Logger) were backported from the trunk...

PHP AnyXML 0.1.1 Released

AnyXML is an XML read-only class that offers PHP 5 SimpleXML's capabilities on any host, even those with PHP 4 or lacking the expat extension. It will automatically and transparently fail back to the fastest available solution, always offering a consistent API. It is a nice solution to PHP and XML troubles...

phpCodeGenerator 0.2.1 Released

phpCodeGenerator is a database-driven Web site code generator. It reads the database and generates a Web site with the ability to create, list, edit, update, delete, and search records. It is known to work with MySQL, Microsoft Access, and PostgreSQL. phpCodeGenerator 0.2.1 is a maintenance release with updated documentation and graphics as well as many bugfixes...

phpCodeGenerator 0.2.1 Released

phpCodeGenerator is a database-driven Web site code generator. It reads the database and generates a Web site with the ability to create, list, edit, update, delete, and search records. It is known to work with MySQL, Microsoft Access, and PostgreSQL. phpCodeGenerator 0.2.1 is a maintenance release with updated documentation and graphics as well as many bugfixes...