php|architect – September 2006

Is PHP 5 really slower than PHP 4?

There are a whole lot of myths floating around when it comesto PHP 5—or are there? In this article, Zend’s internalsgurus, Andi Gutmans and Dmitry Stogov, take a close look at thedifferences between PHP 4 and later versions of PHP, and explainwhy benchmark tests are unreliable indicators when it comes toreal-world performance.—by Andi Gutmans

State of the PEAR

The PEAR project has taken some heat on the blogs and mailinglists recently. Does the rush to Enterprise PHP 5 frameworks signalthe beginning of the end for the project, or does PEAR provide aunique platform for stable code as well as code deployment? Tobetter investigate these questions PEAR contributor Aaron Wormustakes a walk through the history of PEAR to see where it came from,and attempts to determine where it is going.—by Aaron Wormus

Know Your Stuff

The key to learning any language is good documentation, andPHP is famous for the quality of its manual. Hundreds ofcontributors have contributed additions and changes to the PHPManual over the years, improving it on a daily basis. The barrierbetween users and contributors is virtually non-existent, making iteasy for anyone with the desire–and a little ability–to become amember of the PHP Documentation Group. Learn about the Manual’shistory and future with Philip Olson, then get involved!—by Philip Olson

Desperately Seeking Susan

Writing a simple search engine from scratch is surprisinglyeasy using prepared SQL statements, and can improve the performanceand scalability of your Web application dramatically. In thisarticle, author Tom Gidden covers the basics, and will show you howto implement a search engine for your site with PHP 5, MySQL (orany other commonly used database engine) and the PDOextension.—by Tom Gidden

Security Corner: Configuration Security (Part 2)

One of the things that allow PHP to be as flexible as it is,is a fairly large set of configuration often controlled via thephp.ini configuration file. These configuration directives controlthe behavior of the language, which in turn permit different modesof operations depending on the need and environment. A fair numberof those settings have an impact on the security of the PHPinstallation and don’t necessarily have the best settingsenabled by default. In this article, security expert IliaAlshanetsky will review the “security settings” of thePHP.ini file and consider their consequences and benefits.—by Ilia Alshanetsky