Sabato sarò a Cesena per tenere un talk su IA e eZpublish. Durante il weekend ho fatto un brainstorming con me stesso e quindi vi segnalo i temi che andrò a trattare:

- IA e CMS: cosa sono
- eZ publish: enterprise key features
- scalabilità dei contenuti
- progettazione dell'architettura delle informazioni
- blueprints e struttura del sito
- creazioni di classi di oggetti in eZ
- il sistema di templating in eZ
- wireframes e template
- relazioni tra contenuti
- categorie
- link tra contenuti e relazioni tra oggetti in eZ
- keywords/tagging
- tags in eZ publish
- flussi di produzione e eZ workflow system
- sistemi di navigazione: menù e breadcrumbs
- personalizzazione (eZ users)

A seguito del mio intervento ce ne sarà un altro su eZ publish, tenuto da Francesco e dal taglio più tecnico.

ps: spero di riuscire a vedere anche qualcuno di quelle zone (Pesaro, Ancona, chennesò )

Last weekend we had a PHP developers meeting in Paris to discuss PHP 6. (More about that later). Ofcourse when you're in Paris you need to see some of the sights. Together with Marcus, Andrei and Jani we toured the famous landmarks in Paris. On the left you can see the Eiffel Tour and below the Arc de Triomphe.

The other pictures can be found in my gallery.

During the conference in Frankfurt I visited the local Zoo with Ilia and Sebastian to take some pictures.

Unfortunately most of the animals were inside, and it's quite hard to take pictures through think glass. But atleast you can get really close up pictures without your head getting torn off.

This shows really well what an aperture of 1.2 does - you can see that only a very small amount is in the focus area here.

Outside we found two leopards, one was constantly moving, but this one was quietly laying and watching around.

The rest of the pictures from the Zoo are in my gallery.

My German slides for ContentmanagerDays 2005 are now available for download in the talks area. I explained how eZ publish is being used for Enterprise Application Integration in a common project of eZ systems and Siemens Business Services. The eZ publish implementation allows to track the usage of paletts using RFID chips. Does not sound like a CMS-thing at all when you first hear of it, but nicely demonstrates the power of eZ publish.

We did it! Brookins Consulting is now officially eZ publish partner! Announcements eZ systems partner news, Brookins Consulting and Brookins Consulting on ez.no).

In Ben Ramsey's latest post today, he talks about filtering user input and some of the wealth of discussions that have come up about it on the php-general mailing list.

Richard Lynch even tossed out a few of his ideas concerning the use of a $_CLEAN superglobal variable that would merely serve as a reminder to programmers (through its constant use in the PHP manual) to filter input as a "best practice" (see here and here). Furthermore, on Chris Shiflett's blog, Richard comments that "[s]urely our base solution for minimal Security should be a fundamental part of the PHP language, not some add-on second thought."

I tend to agree with Richard, and that's why I've been paying attention to the PECL Input Filter extension.

Ben starts from the beginning, talking about the Input Filter's roots (from Derick and Rasmus), and Richard's point about security tools being a "fundamental part of the PHP language". He gives an example of a form and how an integrated PHP extension might look to handle the filtering, and his personal opinion on the matter:

It should be noted that it is just as easy to filter input without these built-in functions, but, perhaps, with the inclusion of these functions, it will encourage others to start properly filtering data.

On his blog today, Richard Davey has posted this new book review of one of the latest offerings from the "Practical Guide" series - "Multi-Tier Application Programming with PHP".

At this point in PHP's dynamic evolution there is a new buzzword doing the rounds: "enterprise". It is becoming commonly accepted that PHP is a capable language choice as part of an enterprise solution; this book plays upon those thoughts and offers the readers a chance to witness the author build a complete PHP application with multi-tier architecture and scalability at its core, something of a dream for those of us who are at the level where they are progressing beyond the single server/application environment.

In this book author David Wall shows us how to create a PHP application based specifically on a multi-tier architecture and design. The question is: does it live up to the claims?

He explores the book, noting that it might have missed the target audience a bit. The book also suffers from content that can cause what he calls the "chapter skipping syndrome" - dropping chapters as you go along because of their attempt to match a wider audience. The book covers what you'd expect - an intro to multi-tier (from an MVC approach, using SOAP), creating classes, HTTP protocols, and more. Richard's overall view of the book?

But for those who were really hoping for a solid grounding in multi-tier application design and implementation, you'll be left feeling cheated out of your hard earned money. There is a large gap in the PHP book market for a title of this nature, sadly this one doesn't come close to filling it.

November 17, 2005 : Brookins Consulting is now an official eZ publish partner, as announced on eZ systems partner news.

Today on the Oracle Technology Network, there's an article from Matt Kern with a detailed look at getting the Zend Core for Oracle working on your installation.

Since the early days PHP has been able to talk to Oracle-but it wasn't easy. Deploying PHP with Oracle was complicated at best, requiring developers and administrators to find, download, compile, link and configure multiple applications and packages. Unfortunately, this fact was counterintuitive for PHP users, as PHP has always been known for rapid deployment and quick time to market, not cumbersome processes better left to the C curmudgeons.

Thanks to the latest collaborative effort between Oracle and Zend, those days are history. Zend Core for Oracle allows developers to install, deploy, and configure PHP and Oracle just about as quickly and painlessly as possible. In this final installment of the DeployPHP series, you'll learn how that process works.

He takes his time and even includes a "Benefits for You" and "Benefits for Bosses" section to get the ball rolling. From there, he installs Apache, then installs the Core (complete with its own text UI installer). From there, it's all just a matter of configuration - and, of course, there's a whole interface to makes changes to that as well.

I'm really impressed at how this Oracle/PHP integration has turned out. When I first read things about it, I thought it was just a replacement for the Oracle drivers that PHP was using - but it's that and much more...check it out!

Exactly one year ago, at November 16th 2004, I entered the doors of the eZ systems office in Skien/Norway and saw the shoes of my colleagues. In Norway, you always take off your shoes when entering a house and put on your slippers, so does the eZ crew in the headquarters.

Meanwhile, the shoes got removed from the entrance and are being piled somewhere else, out-of-sight for visiting customers. I am still at eZ systems and admit, that this is the coolest company I ever got to know. Just happy to work there!