EAV Modeling

Although best known for its use in the medical recordsindustry, the Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) model can be a usefultechnique for designing any database that needs to store a largeand/or frequently-changing set of data fields.—by Carl Welch

E-mail Verification

A user submits an email address through a contact page. Next,your PHP script takes over and validates it. You may conclude thatyou can now move on. But have you really exercised due diligence?If that email address were a fake, how would you know? Moreimportantly, how would your script know? In this article, Sharonwill explore some techniques that should prove useful.—by Sharon Levy

Migrating PHP, part II: PHP Code

As PHP 4 support will be discontinued on August 8th, 2008,now is the time to migrate your legacy PHP applications to PHP 5.In last month’s issue, Stefan covered some important aspects of theserver environment that you should keep in mind when preparing aPHP migration. In this article, he will show you code that islikely to cause problems when migrating and provide you withsolutions to make your application work on the targetsystem.—by Stefan Priebsch

A Refactoring Diary: The Story Continues

This is the final part of Bart’s diary recording the attemptto refactor his old legacy CMS, which I would like to replace witha rock solid, framework-based Internet application. He startedadapting his CMS to use the Zend Framework last month, and will nowconclude the journal. Enjoy!—by Bart McLeod

Editorial: E_YMMV

PHP extension developers have a new challenge to look forwardto: compatibility with the upcoming version 6 of thelanguage.—by Steph Fox

/etc: Beyond Safe Mode

We’ve all heard the rumours about the end of safe_mode, andnow it’s getting scarily close to becoming a reality. In thiscolumn, Stuart talks about some of the alternative approaches toshared server security.—by Stuart Herbert

Test Pattern: Scripting Integration

Testing as you go can be crucial to a project’s success,especially when you really don’t think you have enough time to doit—and besides, actual development is so muchmore interesting… If this sounds like you, automated builds andtests are the way to go. In this month’s Test Pattern, Mattintroduces you to the joy of scripting the mundane.—by Matt Zandstra

exit(0): Welcome to the Intertuber

Tired of “mashups” that combine Google Maps, the White Pages,Twitter and Flickr to build the least useful application sinceMicrosoft Bob? Marco looks at one mashup thatactually—gasp!—serves apurpose.—by Marco Tabini