Brian Swan's Blog

I wish I could attribute my recent lapse in reading to enjoying more time outside in a beautiful, sunny Seattle summer. But alas, summer hasn’t really arrived yet, and work hasn’t slowed down (the pace seems to have picked up, actually). So, my list is a bit shorter than usual (but not short on quality!). Enjoy…

As I arrived yesterday for day 4 (the last day) of the SQL Server JumpIn! Camp, one participant said to me,“I’m starting to feel worn down.” I think that was the general sentiment of everyone that was there…and with good reason. During each day of the camp, PHP developers worked side-by-side with Microsoft developers to add SQL Server and SQL Azure support to their projects, but nearly everyone put in many extra hours late at night (and even early morning!) to add support for other Microsoft technologies (such as IIS, Web Platform Installer, and Windows Azure). The amount of work done by the participants was incredible. You can get a sense of just how much progress was made by this picture of our “progress” board taken on the last day of the camp:

I recently had a chance to catch up via e-mail with Ben Waine, winner of the 2011 PHP on Azure contest winner. The announcement of his victory was actually made at the Dutch PHP Conference in May, but we’ve both been extremely busy since then, so exchanging e-mails has taken a while. I only followed the contest from a distance while it was happening, but after hearing that Ben had won the contest (I had the good fortune of meeting Ben in person at the 2010 Dutch PHP Conference) and after reading his blog series about building his application, I wanted to find out more about his experience. He does a great job of detailing his experience on his blog, so I highly suggest reading his articles if you are looking to understand the benefits and challenges of running PHP application on the Windows Azure platform. If you are interested in learning more about Ben and his hind-sight perspective on his project, read on…

Next week, Microsoft will host its second SQL Server JumpIn! Camp, and I’m very excited to be a participant (take a look at the list (below) of PHP applications and frameworks that will be represented and you will understand why!). I was fortunate enough to attend the first JumpIn! Camp (last November), and what I liked most about that camp was that it was an excellent two-way learning experience. The main goal of the first camp was (and is for next week’s camp) to add SQL Server support to several PHP applications and frameworks. (To understand why this was the goal, read these two interviews: Interview with Julian Egelstaff, Technical Architect at Freeform Solutions and Interview: Ashay Chaudhary on the SQL Server JumpIn! Camp.) In the first camp (as will be in the second camp) PHP and Microsoft developers worked side-by-side to learn from each other in working toward this goal. The end result was that, in addition to the stated goal being achieved, both PHP and Microsoft developers learned a great deal about each other and their respective technologies. (To see some of what I learned at the camp, check out these articles: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brian_swan/archive/tags/jumpin+camp/.) I have every reason to expect next week’s camp to provide a similar experience for all involved.

In this article, I’ll show you how to improve the performance of PHP applications on Windows/IIS by covering the What, When, and How of using the IIS Output Caching module. As background reading (or for the condensed version of my post), I suggest reading this: Configure IIS 7 Output Caching (and I strongly suggest reading the introduction to that article).

For me, the highlight in this week’s list are the first two. Both the SQLSRV and PDO_SQLSRV drivers are now in PECL. For some, that may not be a big deal, but it’s something I’ve been pushing for a long time. I see it as one more (small) step toward community citizenship…

Based on my reading list this week, you can infer that I was either very busy with other work or that I was goofing off more than I should have. Since my manager may be reading this, I’ll go with “very busy”. Highlights include Ben Waine winning the PHPAzure contest and MODX releasing v2.1 with support for the full Microsoft stack…

The Interoperability Team at Microsoft announced today that the production-ready 3.0 version of the Windows Azure SDK is now available. You can read about the details of the release here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/interoperability/archive/2011/05/26/new-sdk-shows-how-to-leverage-the-scalability-of-windows-azure-with-php.aspx, but I wanted to share what I consider the highlights of the release in this post.