Pluggable Authentication Modules

Ever had to rewrite an application to take advantage of yourclient’s new authentication scheme, or wished dearly that theservice you’re installing had Kerberos support? PAM (PluggableAuthentication Modules) is a collection of libraries that handlethe authentication tasks of applications, allowing them to staycompletely independent of the underlying authentication scheme.This article, from PHP’s PAM contributor, Mikael  Johansson,introduces PAM, touches briefly on how to configure it, andexplains how to interact with it from within PHP.—by Mikael Johansson

FileMaker for PHP Developers: Part 2

FileMaker is a popular and powerful desktop databaseapplication toolkit. FileMaker, Inc. recently released a betaversion of the FileMaker API for PHP, which allows PHP to moreeasily talk to the FileMaker Server Advanced product. Last month,author Jonathan Stark introduced some of the concepts behind thenewly hatched API. In the concluding episode of this two-partseries, he explains how FileMaker makes editing your databaserecords a snap.—by Jonathan Stark

MySQL Babel

Meet MySQL Babel. The project, by author Alessandro Rosa,currently at prototype stage, aims to open up PHP applications touser-defined database interrogation by translating native languagesentences into SQL queries. The intended audience for this articleis intermediate to advanced level programmers and advanced databasefront-end users who might be interested in helping develop theBabel project, and ultimately in using it.—by Alessandro Rosa

Practical Active Record in PHP

The Active Record design pattern provides an objectedoriented wrapper around database access. In this article, DirkMerkel explains how he learned from existing Active Recordimplementations and found himself creating a powerful tool for usein PHP/MySQL application development.—by Dirk Merkel

Security Corner: Why Upgrade to PHP 5.2.1

A few weeks ago, columnist and PHP Release Manager IliaAlshanetsky rolled PHP 5.2.1—the latest word in PHPdevelopment. The 5.2.1 release is unusual in its focus onsecurity—and, in particular, in the number of security issuesit addresses. This is an overview of the security fixes andenhancements found in PHP 5.2.1.—by Ilia Alshanetsky

Test Pattern: Deploying PHP Applications

Ease of deployment is one of the biggest advantages of Webapplications over desktop applications, but that doesn’t mean it’sfoolproof. This month, Jeff Moore takes a tour around some of thepitfalls of application deployment and casts an eye over the PEARinstaller’s response to them.—by Jeff Moore