Keeping It Simple

  • Running PHP at a Windows 10 Command Line

    Running PHP at a Windows 10 Command Line

    A technical writer friend of mine asked me to help her this week. She needs to run PHP scripts at the command-line on Windows 10. She installed WAMP Server which includes PHP. I think she just needs to change the PATH so when she runs “php” in a command window, it will find the PHP interpreter. I…

  • Webinar on PHP and MySQL Replication

    Using MySQL replication gives you an opportunity to scale out read queries. However, MySQL replication is asynchronous; the slave may fall behind. This Wednesday, January 23 2013, I’ll be presenting a free webinar about using MySQL replication on busy PHP web sites.  Register here:  http://www.percona.com/webinars/readwrite-splitting-mysql-and-php Applications have variable tolerance for data being out of sync…

  • C Pointers Explained, Really

    While I was in college, a friend of mine complained that he was confused while programming in C, struggling to learn the syntax for pointers. He gave the example of something like: *x=**p++ being ugly and unreadable, with too many operations layered on each other, making it hard to tell what was happening.  He said…

  • Don’t Put the Cart Before the Horse

    Don’t Put the Cart Before the Horse

    April 2nd I made this undiplomatic statement (funny how Twitter practically encourages being provocative): #ZF 2.0 is a great example of second-system syndrome. Matthew Weier O’Phinney and I have a good working relationship. I think his work on the Zend Framework project has been amazing, both from a technology perspective and a marketing perspective. So when…

  • Sql Injection Slides Posted

    I gave a presentation today at the MySQL Conference & Expo 2010, titled SQL Injection Myths and Fallacies. Thanks to everyone who came to my talk! I appreciate your interest in learning to develop more secure applications. SQL Injection is a serious threat to web applications, and it’s only going to get worse. It’s incumbent…

  • Announcing Awk on Rails

    Announcing Awk on Rails

    Awk on Rails is a new kind of web application development framework, with a distinction that no other framework has: Awk on Rails is fully POSIX compliant. Awk on Rails brings the best practices of modern web application development to the ALAS stack (Apache, Linux, Awk, Shell). This stack is entirely new to the field…

  • Rendering Trees with Closure Tables

    I got a comment from a reader about the Naive Trees section of my presentation SQL Antipatterns Strike Back. I’ve given this presentation at the MySQL Conference & Expo in the past. I’d also like to mention that I’ve developed these ideas into a new book, SQL Antipatterns: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Database Programming. The…

  • Speaking on SQL Injection at MySQL Conference

    Speaking on SQL Injection at MySQL Conference

    I’m speaking this year at the MySQL Conference & Expo 2010 in Santa Clara. Be sure to get your early registration discount by Feb 22! If you miss that deadline, get 25% off with this discount code: mys10fsp I’m presenting a talk on SQL Injection Myths and Fallacies. This may seem like a topic that’s…

  • What is QEP?

    In the context of database programming, QEP is an acronym for Query Execution Plan. The database server analyzes every SQL query and plans how to use indexes and order tables to produce the result in the most efficient way. You can get a report of the QEP for a SELECT query using the EXPLAIN command…

  • Free Software vs. Gratis Software

    A lot of folks are unclear on the subtleties of free software and open source. Mike Hogan writes a blog article”Is Hybrid Licensing of OSS Hypocrisy?” to try to shed some light on this. With respect, I think he has missed part of it. We’re talking about two orthogonal things here. One is open-source versus…

Got any book recommendations?