Bryan Alsdorf did a good presentation on the new features being planned for PHP 6, the next major release of PHP. He also discussed some of the important changes that are coming up on PHP 5.3, such as the new mysqlnd and (possibly) namespaces.

If you missed the meeting, you can download the example source code and the PDF presentation here: PHP 6 presentation (PDF format)

Ryan Hill from Deviant Research did a great job presenting on PDT, the new generation of IDE tools from Zend (the company founded by some core PHP developers). We discussed a wide variety of topics related to PDT, including the community aspect of this software project, as well as some of the cool features available in PDT.

If you missed the meeting, you can download the example source code and the PDF presentation below:

• Example source code
• PDT presentation (PDF format)

We had a great turnout in the November meeting, with around 20 members showing up to hear about GD and PDT. I took a few pictures, which are available below through Flickr:

Joao Prado Maia presented on a novel approach to perform form validation with Smarty and AJAX. Through the use of the PHP DOM extension, form validation is added to XHTML templates dynamically, easing the pain of modifying dozens of forms to add proper validation.

If you missed the meeting, you can download the presentation below:

• Form Validation in Smarty (PowerPoint format)

Jordan Raub did a good presentation about SPL, the Standard PHP Library, at our July meeting. Thanks for Jordan for showing up even while being slightly sick with a fever!

• SPL presentation material

For more information about SPL, look at the official PHP manual section and this page direct from the core developer with detailed class by class definitions.

Don Hobson gave a presentation about the Symfony framework at our June meeting, and the following is the material provided that night.

• Symfony2.ppt
• phpMeetupDemo.doc

We will have a presentation from Mike Culver of Amazon.com about the Amazon Web Services, and what’s possible by using the available developer program. Full details below:

Amazon Web Services
What’s possible in a post Web 2.0 world? Innovation continues at a mind-bending pace, and this presentation will showcase some thought-provoking new directions that Web Services are headed in. The presentation will provide an overview of Amazon Web Services, including a demonstration showing how to easily set up a virtual server environment using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. Also included will be a Web Service named Mechanical Turk that allows computers to make requests of people, an online storage service, and more.

Amazon spent ten years and over $2 billion developing a world-class technology and content platform that powers Amazon.com for millions of customers. Using Amazon Web Services (AWS), over 200,000 developers have registered to build software applications leveraging the same robust, scalable, and reliable technology.

About the Speaker
Mike Culver joined the Developer Relations Group of Amazon Web Services in May, 2006. Mike brings with him fifteen years of technology leadership experience, including at companies such as Microsoft. In addition, Mr. Culver has a strong background running an IT organization. As a Web Services Evangelist at Amazon, he helps developers take advantage of disruptive technologies that are going to change the way we think about computer applications, and the way that businesses compete.

Join us March 1st at the University of Houston. See our Driving directions page for information on how to get there.

As it is usual for our group, every month we have presentations about topics related to Web development and PHP and MySQL in particular. We usually have two presentations, one about libraries, practices or tricks on how to improve your productivity and another presentation on actual tools, such as IDEs and database administration tools.

If you have an idea for a session for an upcoming meeting, send it over! Presentations don’t need to be complicated affairs, and two-way sharing of ideas and experiences is the goal.

Get in touch through a comment if you wish to participate.

Bryan Alsdorf (Manager of Support Systems with MySQL AB) gave a great presentation on the most important features coming around with the new 5.1 release of MySQL. Lots of very interesting and useful features are included, so download the presentation and send comments.

Kevin Carpenter of UptimeData.com did a session about form validation with JavaScript. There was a great amount of interaction with the members of the group, and we also talked about using AJAX to merge form validation in JavaScript with the required server-side validation done through PHP. Kevin’s demonstration page is available online.