The next few days I will be in New York City to talk about Xdebug at the New York PHP Conference. Hope to see you there!

As was briefly mentioned in this previous post from Christopher Jones, the time has finally come for the release of the "Undergroup PHP and Oracle Manual" - released today in PDF form [pdf].

The book is 124 pages of Oracle/PHP goodness, covering a wide range of topics - all the way from introductory material on the extensions out to simple globalization within the data. It's not a complete or complex guide to all things Oracle, but it is definitely a great resource to get you up and running quickly. They also won't teach you SQL, so you'll probably want to have a background in databases already.

The book is free for all to download and use, so grab your copy [pdf] today!

Christopher Jones also notes that they have plans to keep it updated as new chnages in the Oracle/PHP relationship arise.

The eZ components 1.1 have been released. Major new features include the new Template component, mail parsing functionality for the Mail component and a package for manipulating database structures.

DevShed starts up a new series today for those looking to work with XML in PHP5 and just need something light and, well, simple. To help, they've posted part one of their "Introduction to SimpleXML" series.

They start with a method for getting the data into a SimpleXML object in the first place, reading in an XML file. With the object (and data inside) in place, they show how to query that data (as array elements), pulling out the bits you need. Combine these two bits of functionality into a simple class and you'll have the last step of part one of the series - building a basic XML parsing class.

PHPit.net has posted yet another PHP-related tutorial, this time with a focus on test driven development.

He uses the SimpleTest frameork to illustrate his points. He starts off with a simple example - settin g up the framework and creating a class to test a class, Biter. The testing class first just looks to see if the Biter class exists, failing before they create the class file it's looking for. With the help of a bit more code and a few more test examples, you get a good jumping off point for creating your own tests to evaluate your code.

In another "cut to the chase" kind of post today, this new item on Bnnx.com gives the steps needed to install the Zend Optimizer.

You'll need root access to the server you're installing it on, but after that, it's really a pretty simple setup process. You'll also need to have the webserver up and working with PHP to get it all working (obviously), but having each step laid out for you makes it each.

If you're looking to install this offering from Zend, be sure to check this process out.

They continue on in this post on the Zend Developer Zone with a resource to get you thinking - an Internationalization Primer from Johnathan Snook (as printed in Digital Web Magazine). He looks at the basics you'll need to know when putting in multi-language support, including database designs and precompiling.

Are you thinking about getting into working with PHP on your local Windows machine, but aren't sure how to get it all set up (or maybe just don't want to bother with it all). It's really not as hard as you think, and this quick post shows you how to get it up and working in just a few minutes.

Obviously, it depends on your download time, but from the start of the install out to the testing of the configuration, there's less than 20 steps between you and a working installation. Each step is detailed to the point of telling you line numbers to go and change in the config files and what files to move where.

In the end, you'll have a standard WAMP (Windows/Apache/MySQL/PHP) installation up and ready to serve out your application.

In this week's newsletter we bring you news about the upcoming eZ publish conference, the eZ Hackathon event and an announcement of a new article, together with an update on the current bug status.

Join us for an eZ Hackathon at our summer conference. (What's
a Hackathon? Check out Wikipedia.)

Maybe you have a patch you want to contribute, but it needs a little
review and polishing before it's ready? Maybe you have a great idea
that would benefit from collaboration with other members of the eZ
community? The Hackathon is the place to work on code with input from
other eZ developers and members of the eZ crew.