Utahcon is a world renowned PHP developer having worked for companies like Overstock.com, SOS Staffing, GrabTakeout.com, Code Greene and more! Utahcon has been developing in PHP for over 10 years, and still considers himself to be a noob. Join us for a lot of fun and entertainment (possibly at Utahcon’s expense).

Come early for good seatings. We expect the afterparty to be at Applebees at the Gateway again, unless there’s a majority in favor of switching it up.

While it is definitely not a requirement that the meetings be held at the place of employment of the current president, that tradition will continue for the foreseeable future, as he new meeting location is my place of employment. We’re the one with the big green stripe on the front window and door. Note that you can get to us via southbound State Street at 350 S onto Exchange Place, or via westbound 400 South at about 30 E, onto Cactus Street. Many of you may be familiar with XMission, and we’re right across the back alley from them. Also important to note is that parking on the street at meters is free after 6pm, and parking in the garage across the street will cost $5 for the evening, and we will be unable to validate. We will continue to meet at seven o’clock on the evening of the third Thursday of each month.

There is an Applebee’s at the Gateway, a short free Trax ride away from our meeting location, so I anticipate we’ll head over there en masse after the presentation for the after-party. They also validate an hour of parking I think if anyone wanted to drive over there rather than come back to get a car.

If we find that the downtown location is for whatever reason undesirable, we can switch things up. Since I live in Draper, I would be happy to do the after party at the Draper Applebee’s if people would prefer, but I suspect our friends from the North might not like driving down there just for a different Applebee’s, but I could be wrong.

Ever wondered what really happens when your PHP script runs? Justin cover the major milestones in the life and times of a PHP request (read, parse, compile, execute, output ) and where to look for road bumps along the way. There are lots of tools available to make your PHP purr like a kitten, so I’ll dive into op code caches (with APC),
op code dumps (with VLD – Vulcan Logic Dumper), and profiling (with Xdebug and webgrind). It will be a great time digging a little deeper in to PHP!

Joseph is a California native, living in Utah with his wife and children. He got hooked on email when it meant dialing into a BBS with a 2400 baud modem and ended up memorizing way too much of the AT command set. Access to the Internet changed all that and going to work for an ISP cemented that shift. It also exposed to him to the world of open source, starting with FreeBSD in 1996. From there he spent a number of years in IT doing a little bit of everything. Joseph joined Automattic in 2007, where he focuses on WordPress APIs (XML-RPC/AtomPub), realtime-ish updates (rssCloud/PuSH), WordPress.org themes and stats, and likes to dabble in front and back end
performance hacks.

5 Things I wish they had told me before I started programming in PHP is a raucous romp through PHP, covering not only mistakes that programmers make, but skills they need to make sure they master.

1. Learn a framework. I don’t care if you didn’t write it, you’re not (insert demigod programmer here) so quit thinking you’ve got it figured out. Frameworks exist for a reason and that reason it to give you the tools you need to do your job. If you are a carpenter, you don’t go out and build your own circular saw before you start a project, you use one already built. We will review the 5 most popular PHP frameworks.
2. Learn that PHP is not (insert the language you last worked in). More importantly, we don’t want it to be either. PHP is what it is, the best solution for web project. The faster you learn that, the faster you will get things done. PHP is unique and proud of it.
3. Learn where to get help. Help sites for PHP abound on the web. Anyone with a copy of WordPress can start sharing the things that they’ve learned. Unfortunately, not all sites are created equally. If you are new to PHP, look to sites like phpdeveloper.org and DevZone as pointers to other good content. If you are an old hand, here are a few sites you may not know about that will help you get going.
4. Learn your stack. LAMP, WAMP, SAMP MAMP, or WIMP know the stack you are using inside and out. We’ll cover the basics you have to know, from setting up a virtual domain, directory structure stratigies to url re-writing and logging. We will look at a few offerings including Zend Server.
5. Get Involved! Getting involved in the community is not somethng you do because you are bored on a friday night. it’s something you do because you want to know more than the guy sitting in the cube next to you. You can either spend every night reading and memorizing the PHP manual, or you can get involved in the community and start talking with the people white the language. Theya re out there, they don’t usually bite and they will help you as long as you don’t expect them to do your job for you. The next time you boss asks you about the new Date() features in PHP 5.3, you can reply “Let me ask Derick real quick.”

For the past 8 years Cal has worked with PHP and MySQL on Linux OSX, and when necessary, Windows. He has built a variety of projects ranging in size from simple web pages to multi-million dollar web applications. When not banging his head on his monitor, attempting a blood sacrifice to get a particular piece of code working, he enjoys building and managing development teams using his widely imitated but never patented management style of “management by wandering around”. These days, when not working with PHP, Cal can be found working on a variety of projects, most of which require a higher security clearance than you have so they can’t be listed here. Cal is currently based in Nashville TN where he is currently gainfully unemployed and seeking a job in IT so he doesn’t have to go out and get a real job. Cal is happily married to wife 1.25, the lovely and talented Kathy. Together they have 2 wonderful kids who were both smart enough not to pursue a job in IT.

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First, let me talk a little about what has prompted me to get my hands on this great tool. DBVisualizer is a database tool that is written in Java and can run on various platforms; meaning I can run it on windows, linux and mac – and I do. It is fantastic to have a tool that I can run on all three and use it daily for all my database development. I do a lot of database development with a few different databases. As I work on mulitple databases, I find it difficult to move between different tools to perform similar tasks. Currently, I am working with the following databases: Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Sqlite. I do, every once in a while, access MS SQL Server and DB2. It is rare, but the occasion does arise. What I find frustrating is to have tools for each one or running stuff on the command line all the time. Don’t get me wrong, I love the command line, yet I do my job is a lot easier when I have one tool to handle all the different databases that I work with on a daily basis. For this reason, I have been eager to give DBVisualizer a spin.

When I first started up DBVisualizer it was great to have database drivers already configured for me. That was one of the issues with previous version that they did not come with some preconfigured drivers that would allow me to get my database connections up and going. It was very easy to get MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite up and running. I did have to get Oracle configured (that might be an issue with Oracle that it does not come pre-configured due to restrictions on the bundling the driver with the product). Either way I got it installed and configured.

One new feature that I throughly enjoy is the concept of profiles for each database type. For example, there is a profile for MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite. This allows me to custom tailer my connections for my database types or I can have it use the auto detection to decide which one to use. I wish I had all the time to go into the other options that can be configured with the connection. There are setting for the type of connection with regards to the type of database I am working with: development, test, or production. I can also configure any JDBC options as well. The connection hooks come in handy for anything that I need to run right when the connection is made and when the connection is going to be disconnected. There are tons of other configuration items; you just have to check it out for yourself.

I really like the additional of folders in the Database Tab. This has allowed me to organize my databases into folders and groups. I like to put all my database types in a specific folder. The Scripts Tab has really been useful for storing all my scripts that I tend to run over and over again. The Favorites Toolbar is a great addition for all my databases that I constantly access throughout the day.
For some the Query Builder might be a one feature that is amazing. For me, I am not a big fan of the Query Builder; it is there for the using and it works great. For some, this might be just the thing that you need for your database development work.

Another great feature that I have come to enjoy is the References Graph that can generate a graph based on the references between your tables. This has really helped me out to see a representation of the database in a nice simple graph, which I can then export or print.

Sometimes as I am designing the database I need to do many different administrative tasks on the databases. DBVisualizer offers various actions that allow me to perform these tasks and they are accessed at different levels depending on the database object type that I am working with. These actions have really saved me time exporting and restoring a database.

Another new feature that I wanted to check out was the Procedure Editor. I tried it out on creating some MySQL procedures and only felt that it lacked in the debugging of a procedure. That is it! It provides a clean and intuitive interface for creating functions and procedures. It is fantastic to use the same tool for creating functions and stored procedures in different databases. Then I was able to execute that code and test it out. I wish that it had line by line debugging of the procedure as that would save me some time and effort of some of the code that I was writing.

Overall, I have been very impressed with DBVisualizer. The product is clean, stable and allows me to accomplish my tasks regardless of the database that I am connected with. There are a few items that I would love to see added to the product. Namely procedure debugging and integration with a content repository system like svn, cvs and or git. I have some projects that are database ones and it would be nice to work with them as a project instead of just opening files up and running the contents. Since this is a java based project and it uses JDBC drives, I would love to see some integration with some of the new cloud databases like CouchDB or some of the new ones coming out. That might already be in the works for the next version; just a thought.

mainPresentation – Sales 101: The Basics – Daniel Crookston
An overview of a handful of simple sales techniques you can use to schedule more sales calls, win more contracts, and ultimately earn more money. The skills we’ll be focusing on include turning a cold call (whether incoming or outgoing) into an appointment, helping the people you meet with to feel comfortable giving you their business, and negotiating for a better price once they have agreed to purchase your services.

phpFundamentals presentation – Cookies & Sessions in PHP.
For this month’s beginners PHP presentation, the topic will be Cookies & Sessions in PHP. The purpose of Cookies and Sessions and where to implement them into your website. We’ll cover how to use them, as well as some common mistakes that new developers can make.
Presented by Justin Carmony

specialPresentation – Stackable.com
Xmission will be coming out to present to us on what stackable.com is and how it works for you. They will be answering your questions.

About the Main Presenter:

Dan has been programming since he was very young, and programmed professionally for 7 years in PHP. He realized pretty quickly that sales was going to be a big part of being successful, so he took some sales classes and did a lot of studying.
Recently he took a full time sales position to get more experience in a sales-only environment and to have an opportunity to learn from people who sell full time.

Justin Carmony has worked in web development professionally for the last
five years. With emphasis on PHP, .NET, and Web Services, he has worked on
projects ranging from simple websites to complex communications between
thousands of remote systems. He currently is working as an independent
contractor & private consultant. If you have any questions, comments, or
curiosities you can contact him (justin AT justincarmony DOT com) or read
about his latest endeavors at his blog.

Trevor Sharpe will then follow with Basic Linux Server Administration, covering the advanced topic. Many programmers are finding themselves needing to understand and administer linux servers. This presentation is focused on learning how to effectively use the server through scripts, etc. Q & A session on admining to follow.

Trevor Sharpe is a Systems Administrator for a company in SLC and is also a board member for Utah Open Source.

New Meeting Structure

We will be splitting our PHP meetings into 2 parts. First part is basic skills / best practices training. This is for you new guys who want to learn, but don’t know where to start. This section is called PHP fundamentals and will be hosted by Justin Carmony. He and I are working on some printed materials and are ramping this up as we speak. We also have several very senior and tenured members who are VERY friendly to questions. The second portion of our meeting will be a more advanced topic that will be of benefit to intermediate / advanced members, but will still be of great benefit to those who are new.

Still Social!

For those interested in the social aspect of our meeting, we still have the famous UPHPU Afterhours party.

Resources

As far as learning resources, Ray Hunter and I are working on having books available at our meetings. While we will have some fun / zany way of handing out the books, there is an understood condition of receiving the book. You MUST write a review of the book and post it online. If you don’t want to write a review, don’t take the book. I will be breaking arms on this!

Online Resources

I know that our recordings have been sporadic. i’m working on allocating more time to this.