November – 2010 – techPortal

Using MongoDb in PHP Applications November 30, 2010

After recently attending the MongoUK conference in London, it is clear that MongoDB is fast finding application amongst cutting-edge web developers. As a relatively new concept for persistence, NoSQL (Not Only SQL) and more specifically document-oriented databases, such as MongoDB, are starting to enter the web applications landscape. Its strength lies in speed and ability to cope with dynamic data, making its goals align closely with requirements of many websites around today.

This tutorial will show you how to incorporate MongoDB into new or existing object-oriented applications, by showing how to interact and integrate with applications and how to deploy applications using MongoDB. Credit for this approach must go to Matthew Weier O'Phinney who spoke on this topic at the DPC 2010 conference in June. I would suggest reading this tutorial if you are considering using MongoDB for an application and are looking for a starting point on which to build an idea of its features. Alternatively, you may also be interested in this tutorial if you've found yourself getting tied to the persistence layer in the past and are looking for ways to reduce that technology lock-in. If you've implemented MongoDB into many of your systems, then maybe this tutorial will, open your eyes on a new way of integrating it. Whatever your background, if you understand object-orientation and want to start using MongoDB, then this tutorial is for you.
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Microsoft Certified Applications: SilverStripe November 24, 2010

Microsoft recently certified the first open source web application to run on Windows Server 2008 R2. That application was SilverStripe, a Content Management System (CMS) originally developed by a team in New Zealand. There are many excellent CMS and other open source web projects but Microsoft saw something they liked in SilverStripe. Ibuildings are certified SilverStripe partners and have been working with it for quite some time, so I thought this was a great time to shed some light on this excellent product.

SilverStripe has put a lot of work into achieving good performance on Windows and IIS, but it also works well on Linux or Mac Servers running open source web server software. There is also a wide variety of databases which SilverStripe supports including SQLServer, MySQL, Postgres and SQLite.

What SilverStripe Offers

Every web site has different requirements, but a CMS application aims to provide a lot of the features needed while at the same time being easy to customise and extend. Database abstraction is particularly suited to a CMS since the schema is fairly simple and based around a page. SilverStripe has an advanced abstraction layer with an elegant syntax that effectively frees you from defining the database schema and instead lets you define models. In this article, I will show you how to define a new page type with custom fields by extending the Page model, and we'll also take a look at some of the areas that are particularly nicely done by Silverstripe.
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DPCRadio: The Art of Scalability November 23, 2010

Lorenzo Alberton

Having invested time and energy into your application,
nothing could be more exciting than seeing it gain popularity, and seeing your user base grow. However the success of your application could also turn into your worst nightmare! What if the site cannot cope with the load and collapses under its own weight?

The ability to grow (and shrink) according to the needs and the available resources is an essential part of designing applications. In this talk we'll cover the fundamental elements of scalability, including aspects involving people, processes and technology. With sound and proven principles and some advice on how to shape your organisation, set the right processes and design your application, this session is a must-see for developers and technical leads alike.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (79.4MB)
Optimising HMVC Web Applications for Performance November 16, 2010

In an earlier article written for techPortal, Scaling Web Applications With HMVC, the Hierarchical-Model-View-Controller architecture was explored. Using an example web application called Gazouillement and the Kohana Framework, the article investigated how structuring code using an HMVC methodology can help overcome some common scalability challenges in complex software architectures. The article concluded by demonstrating the relative simplicity of horizontally scaling the HMVC Gazouillement example application, after analysis of the execution bottlenecks.

The previous article was intended to be a reintroduction to HMVC for the web application era. HMVC is not a new concept: it was originally referenced in a Java World article over ten years ago and based on an idea that dates back forty years. Todays rise in notoriety of HMVC might be due to the popularity it is enjoying in modern frameworks. Or it could be that the similarity in size and scope of modern web applications to their desktop cousins has given developers reason to revisit the HMVC architecture. Given the present interest in HMVC, this is a great time to explore the subject further and answer a few of the questions arising from the previous article.

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Conference Report: FOWA London 2010 November 15, 2010

This year I was lucky enough to attend the 1st day of the FOWA conference. With experience of language-specific technical conferences, I was expecting talks of the same calibre as I have seen at PHP events, but geared towards front-end technologies. However I was a little disappointed. The conference was aimed mainly at business people, with most talks delivered at a high-level, focusing on trends in the industry. I saw very little code throughout the day.

Easily the most interesting talks I saw were two about HTML5 and related technologies: Michael Mahemoff's HTML5: The Platform Apps Have Been Waiting For and Bruce Lawson's impromptu talk, Standards Yay!
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DPCRadio: Stress-free deployment November 9, 2010

Rob Allen

This talk will concentrate on the various strategies you can use to ensure that developing and releasing new features to a live website is stress-free. Firstly we will look at how organising your source code into branches can provide confidence and allow for features to go-live in any order. We will the consider the mechanics of deploying a new version of the website to the server, ensuring that we can repeat the process the same way every time. Finally we will look at how to roll back a deployment easily and quickly when something goes wrong.

The slides are over on Rob's site if you want to follow along with the talk.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (90.5MB)
Creative MVC: Meet the ViewModel Pattern November 2, 2010

In this article we will introduce a powerful new tool in the arsenal of developers - the ViewModel. This provides MVC applications a natural location for presentation logic and lazy functionality while maintaining the segregation between the layers of responsibility within the code. It allows designers access to data and methods they need, while hiding aspects that aren't needed at view level.
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