This article demonstrates how to create a hypermedia data API using CouchDB, a document database and application server that is accessed through an HTTP API. URIs identify CouchDB resources such as databases, documents, attachments, and configuration sections. HTTP methods define actions on these resources. Requests from CouchDB clients—and responses to CouchDB clients—are self-describing through the use of request headers, response status codes, and response headers. However, CouchDB’s core API does not include hypermedia controls. This article will demonstrate how you can add hypermedia controls to your CouchDB application through the use of show functions, list functions, document update handlers, rewrite rules, and a virtual host or a reverse proxy. –by Bradley Holt

NoSQL databases, as a class, have become an essential tool in the arsenal of a PHP developer. Besides numerous scalability and performance benefits that are inherent to these systems, there is a flexibility behind them that empowers the developer to think outside the box. There are many situations where the rigidity of an SQL-based system, such as in a storefront that holds any number of dissimilar items, becomes onerous to work with. The freedom of schema-less NoSQL systems liberates you from those concerns. Amazon’s SimpleDB (SDB) is a great system to use, not necessarily for its power or flexibility, but for exactly what it says in the name, its simplicity. It’s very easy to get up and rolling on Amazon SimpleDB, and it can take you far. –by Eli White

As PHP developers, we are well aware of the database portion of our stack. SQL is usually the second language that PHP developers pick up out of necessity. If you go beyond straight SQL and look at some of the features of the server itself, you find all sorts of other things to play with. Built-in functions, triggers, variables, stored procedures, and other things are there to make the life of a DBA or a programmer easier. This article will cover two of those things: stored procedures and variables – how they work and how we can use them in PHP. –by Chris Tankersley

I’m always trying to bring you the best that I can with this column; whether that’s concepts, tips, code, pointers or technologies. This month, in the quest to keep it fresh and interesting, I’m not speaking from my own experience. Instead, I’ve sought out five of the best, most experienced, talented and professional individuals that I know and have had the pleasure of working with over the last number of years. Whether it’s designing, developing, debugging, testing or deploying applications or presenting that knowledge at various conferences in Europe and America, they really know their stuff. –by Matthew Setter

Every month, I will focus on a feature taken from other languages like Ruby, Java or Python and see how such features are handled in PHP, or when we can expect such a feature in PHP itself. –by Joshua Thijssen

It’s time to learn to play nice. Reinventing the wheel makes for very little forward momentum. –by Marco Tabini

It has been a long love/hate relationship since I first discovered databases. –by Elizabeth Tucker Long