The August 2009 issue of php|architect is out—this month, our editorial team has trained its collectively keen eye on Non-relational Databases.

Contents

Here’s a quick overview of the contents of
this month’s issue:

• Non-Relational Databases by Russell Smith
  This overview will show you the basic use of some alternative styles of databases, more specifically the non-relational databases SimpleDB and CouchDB. These can have distinct advantages over more typical relational databases.
   
• A Tour of the Doctrine ORM  by Ciaran McNulty
  Nearly every PHP application has to solve the problem of Object Relational Mapping (ORM), but most developers roll their own solution and end up reinventing the wheel. This article explains some of the exciting new features of Doctrine 1.1 and shows how using it can lead to faster development and easier deployment.
   
• Architecture of Adminer by Jakub Vrána
  Adminer is a feature complete MySQL administration tool with the aim of compactness. The whole application consists of a single file that is as small as possible.
   
• Exceptions and Autoloaders by Michael White
  Have you ever tried to throw PHP exceptions inside anautoloader expecting to catch the exception gracefully or, at least, have your custom exception handler function spit out some juicy error statistics? I did and the results surprised me. This article is a walk through my discovery of the problem and search for a solution. Lucky us, I found two answers that do not use eval().
   
• How to Build Your Own Survey Engine by Philippe Randour
  While there are many providers of online surveys, sometimes you have specific requirements or integration needs that could be better served by your own custom development. This article will show you how easy it can be using popular technologies like PHP, MySQL, and jQuery.
   
• Step-By-Step Regex by Darren Cook
  This article is for anyone who has heard other people rave about how useful regexes are but has just never gotten past the initial learning curve. We’re going to take small steps and get you past that first barrier.
   
• Security Roundup:   You’ve Got Mail  by Arne Blankerts
  It’s a tough world out there, but there are ways to secure your forms against bad e-mail addresses.
   
• exit(0): The Value of Bad Code by Marco Tabini
  Learn more about the positive side of bad code.