Friday, May 23. 2008
 This week I'm at the php|tek conference in Chicago, organized by php|architect.
I'm happy to announce that as of now, we have a partnership agreement with php|architect! We will be adding the php|architect trainings to our existing training portfolio, which means that php|architects trainings can now also be delivered on-site in the countries where Ibuildings operates.
php|architect is a strong brand when it comes to PHP knowledge, so I'm very proud they teamed up with us!
The official announcement can be read here:
Press release
Saturday, May 17. 2008
The latest instalment of the PHP Abstract podcast (hosted by Cal Evans from DevZone) is presented by our very own Lorna Mitchell.
In this podcast, Lorna talks about the process of importing data. Not the actual code you write, but the process in general.
Continue reading "PHP Abstract podcast - Data Importing"
Thursday, May 15. 2008
Recently, I've been working with a client as part of a major platform change they're making. It's the third time I've been involved with a big architecture shift, each at a different company, and each larger than the last, but there seem to be some observations that apply whether you've got five servers or five hundred. 1. Business carries on It can be easy to get somewhat myopic when in the middle of an exciting architectural change. Major platform transitions tend to occur when there has been a realisation high up in the company that something needs to be done, so teams often have a fair degree of scope and freedom. However, it is even more likely that other parts of the business will need to continue to work on the existing system. If a new feature is required then it's going to get developed, even if that involves duplicating, or worse conflicting, with work that's being done as part of the platform change.
Continue reading "Platform to Platform"
So we decided that in order to get to see all the people who are interested in PHP leadership topics, we should run an intimate seminar and invite our contacts along. If there is demand, we could run these every month. Here is the invitation that went out:
Free Seminar: Enterprise PHP and Zend
Title: Enterprise PHP and Zend
Date: 10th June 2008
Time: 9:00 - 13:00
Location: King's College London (Hodgkin Building, Guy's Campus
Speaker: Ivo Jansch, CTO of Ibuildings and leading PHP expert
Continue reading "Intimate PHP Seminar"
Monday, May 5. 2008
PHP is a loosely typed language. Most of the time this is very useful because you as a programmer don't have to worry about typecasting: it's done for you. However, on some occasions this can cause some unexpected trouble. These issues can be hard to track down because the error usually doesn't show up at the place where you define your variable, but at the place where you want to use them (which can be in a totally different part of your application).
In this blog I want to point out what can happen if you try to access object properties by reference when the object is not initialized. Although this is not caused by typecasting, the encountered problems can be pretty similar on some occasions.
Continue reading "Accessing object properties by reference"
Friday, May 2. 2008
"Code refactoring is any change to a computer program's code that improves its readability or simplifies its structure without changing its results." - Wikipedia I've met quite a bunch of developers that felt refactoring was a waste of time. "Why would you write code only to change the code at a later point? Why not just write the code perfectly in the first place?" or "You're writing code for the same functionality over and over again, isn't that a waste of time?" I hope to prove to you that there is much power in refactoring, but with power comes responsibility.
Continue reading "The Power of Refactoring"
Friday, April 25. 2008
 We have finalized the program for the Dutch PHP Conference in June.
Based on feedback from the 'call for ideas' we have added a session on security. It will be presented by Johann-Peter Hartmann, the CTO of Mayflower.
Also, we are happy to announce that Terry Chay, a well-known blogger in the PHP community and informally called the 'PHP terrorist', will deliver the closing keynote. His 'the internet is an ogre' talk has been well received at Zend Conference last year, and we're getting him to Europe to awaken developers with his insightful and controversial presentation.
Continue reading "DPC2008 schedule now complete"
Wednesday, April 23. 2008
 So there we were, april 17th, in the middle of London, making our way to The Future of Webdesign Conference. As one of three webdesigners amongst 30+ PHP developers at Ibuildings, you don't often get the chance to visit an event with the focus on your expertise. So, it was an early flight, but after 4 hours or so, webdesigner collegue Norman van der Mull, me and about 850 other design geeks arrived at Kensington Great Hall...
Continue reading "Looking back at FOWD 08"
Friday, April 18. 2008
Last week I read a book covering SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). I thought I'd share some thoughts with you. " Understanding Enterprise SOA" (Manning Publications), is written by Eric Pulier en Hugh Taylor. The target audience for this book are managers and technical architects.
Working with web services, SOAP and mashups with Google maps or flickr, I was anxious to learn more about the architectural part of setting up an SOA in applications. Using webservices is one thing, but designing them in an application environment (which usually contains more than one service component) is another. Maybe because of my technical background I was hoping to get some more insight in how you design SOA applications from a functional analyst and technical architect point of view, but as it turns out, the book is more useful for managers than for technical guys.
Tuesday, April 15. 2008
Saturday the 12th of April a delegation of 8 Ibuildings employees attended the 3rd PFCongrez event in Maarssen, NL. This yearly event is initiated by an association surrounding the popular Dutch website PHPFreakz.nl. As always, conferences like these provide an excellent opportunity to put some faces with the names you got to know over resource websites or IRC.
A comfortable train trip brought us to Utrecht, from where we got on the bus to the location where the conference was held. Some introducing and handshaking later we sat down on some not-too-comfortable chairs, anxiously awaiting the line-up for the day.
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