A new book that teaches users a step-by-step introduction to rapid web development using the MVC CakePHP framework has been announced by Packt Publishing. Written by Anupom Syam and Ahsanul Bari, the book aims to assist PHP programmers to develop and deploy well-crafted and robust web-based applications with the open source MVC CakePHP framework.

CakePHP is an open source web application framework written in PHP. It uses well-known design patterns and provides a structured framework that enables PHP users to develop robust web applications, without any loss of flexibility. The user can code faster, better, and it makes writing Web 2.0-style applications easier.

The book introduces the user to installing the MVC Framework and building his first application, and follows with looking at each main component of a CakePHP application in detail. The book also teaches how to build Web 2.0 style applications using a case study application. PHP Magazine Readers can download freely the chapter 4 Controllers: Programming. Application Logic [PDF 909KB]

Published at PHP Community Magazine

Mercado makes it easy for multi-store online retailers to easily launch and manage new product lines and Websites.

PLEASANTON, CA, August 19, 2008 - Mercado a leading eCommerce solution provider, today announced that Cymax Stores recently deployed Mercado Ignition OnDemand to help them quickly launch a network of eCommerce Websites - each targeting a different product niche and customer demographic. Cymax is a leading home furnishings and electronics retailer, with numerous specialty sites - with over 250,000 products available for consumers and businesses.

Within the past year, through the use of Mercado Ignition OnDemand, Cymax Stores has been able to replicate their successful marketing platform to over 112 unique sites. By the end of 2008, they are predicting that over 200 will be up and running, and forecast an increase in sales of 40% over 2007 - from $32.5 million to over $47 million.

An Internet Retailer Top 500 business (number 247 in 2008), Cymax launched its first online stores November of 2007. Cymax had reviewed various eCommerce site search solutions but selected Mercado's SaaS offering because of its exceptional performance and the ease with which they would be able to get stores up and running in time for the quickly approaching 2007 holiday season.

Published at e-Commerce Magazine

Packt have recently released Service Oriented Architecture with Java, a new book which teaches the concepts and the implementation of using SOA with web services to design a sound architecture for business solutions.

Services-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a software architecture where functionality is grouped around business processes and packaged as interoperable services. SOA also describes IT infrastructure which allows different applications to exchange data with one another as they participate in business processes.

Through this book, users will learn when SOA is the best choice for their web services-based applications and also to design and implement a sound architecture for successful implementation of any business solution.

Published at WebServices Magazine

Intruder Consulting, a telecom company based in Mexico, relies on SourceGuardian encryption software to safeguard its VoIP products. Intruder’s aCube software was extremely vulnerable to piracy by clients who had only leased the software for a specific term or who had not bought the entire system. The PHP files and database could easily be copied to another server.

SourceGuardian secures aCube’s PHP interface to prevent clients from running the application unless they have purchased the whole system, and it encrypts the PHP files, protecting the program by locking it to specific MAC addresses. In order to avoid losing important lease revenue, Intruder is preparing to use yet another feature of SourceGuardian “to ensure that clients who bought the software on a lease term pay their leases on time, or the interface will not work anymore,” says Intruder Consulting CEO Anton Krall.

SourceGuardian, which won a North East UK Export Award in 2004, is now used by thousands of professional web developers, programmers and companies worldwide. Adrian Teasdale, founder of Inovica Ltd., the UK company that developed SourceGuardian, says, “We are very proud to have created a product that assists companies around the world in protecting their valuable intellectual property.”

Published at Enterprise PHP

4D have recently released a new version of their Ajax Framework, included in this new release a major enhancement with HTML 5, Google Gears and Adobe Air support, In addition to support codeless generation of an Ajax client for the iPhone. Below the press release :

Major release features the world's first Flex-to-Database direct connectivity, iPhone 2.0, HTML 5, Google Gears and Adobe AIR Support

July 24, 2008 - SAN JOSE, CA - 4D, Inc., maker of an integrated software platform that simplifies the process of developing and deploying business applications, announced today the release of 4D Web 2.0 Pack v11 Release 2. The new version, a combination of two products - 4D Ajax Framework and 4D for Flex - brings a powerful set of tools, plug-ins, and components that allow 4D developers to easily harness the power of Web 2.0 technologies, and deliver live web and rich internet applications to browsers, desktops, and portable devices such as the iPhone.

"With the advent of technologies like Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) both Flex-powered and Ajax-driven, the iPhone, Adobe AIR, HTML 5, and Google Gears, web applications are making their way to more mobile devices, desktops and, yes, browsers than ever before,"said Laurent Ribardière, President and founder of 4D.

4D for Flex provides the world's first Flex-to-database direct connectivity. All other Flex-to-database solutions require complicated, overweight middleware solutions. 4D for Flex offers a simple, integrated Flex-to-SQL database direct connection. With zero overhead, 4D for Flex not only provides a revolutionarily simple, integrated architecture, but also high-performance connectivity to 4D Server v11 SQL and other industry standard SQL databases.

Published at AJAX Magazine

Packt publishing have recently released a new and interesting JavaScript book that teaches users how to create scalable and reusable JavaScript applications and libraries using the concepts of object-oriented programming. Written by Yahoo! Web developer Stoyan Stefanov, Beginning Object-Oriented JavaScript will teach users to solve web development problems using smart JavaScript. Ajax Magazine readers can download the sample chapter (PDF 872Ko) to have an idea on what the book is all about.

For years, JavaScript has been a handy hacker's tool for adding interactive elements to web pages, now it can be used to build large libraries, multi-tier application architectures, and advanced logic. With these new applications of JavaScript, you need a new way to learn and write it. This book treats JavaScript as a serious object-oriented language. It shows how to build robust, maintainable, and powerful JavaScript libraries, applications, and classes as well as cover many of the recent JavaScript innovations such as AJAX, JSON, and interesting design and coding patterns.

Published at AJAX Magazine

Panther Express Selected to Power VerticalResponse EMail Marketing and Survey Programs. Panther Delivers with 100% Reliability.

New York, NY - (July 21, 2008) - Panther Express, a leading global provider of high-performance content delivery services, today announced they have been selected as the content delivery network (CDN) for VerticalResponse, Inc., the leading supplier of self-service email marketing, survey and direct mail solutions. VerticalResponse has chosen Panther Express's content delivery network to deliver tens of millions of user-requested personal messages and graphic images every day, reliably and quickly.

"We choose Panther Express because we needed a reliable content delivery partner who could provide a rapid, flexible service, international coverage, an extremely high level of network performance and high quality ongoing support to help us ensure that our customers and partner's messages were delivered to end users throughout the world," said Janine Popick, CEO and founder of VerticalResponse. "Panther scales to meet our needs and is able to guarantee the level of excellence we promise our customers. They have been 100% reliable."

"Online marketing businesses like VerticalResponse demand the best possible performance and reliability levels to provide a high quality experience to their customers," said Steve Liddell, CEO of Panther Express. "We are proud that we're able to help provide this high level of consistent quality to their advertising and marketing customers and clients across the globe."

The core of Panther Express' business is the assurance that business-critical content is delivered as promised by companies across industries, ranging from e-commerce and gaming to blogs and news organizations.

Published at e-Commerce Magazine

PHPEclipse 1.2.0 have just been released to include support for XDebug. This release is targeted for Eclipse 3.3 and fix several bugs. PHPEclipse runs on all the major OS platforms and has the following features:

• Syntax Coloring
• Brackets Matching
• Code folding
• Code Completion
• Parameter hints
• Mark Occurrences
• Hover Tooltips
• PHP Manual integration
• Code templates
• XDebug support
• DBG Support
• CVS
• SVN++
• SSH/SFTP ++
• FTPS ++

Published at PHP Community Magazine

ZZEE has released ZZEE PHPExe 1.0 for Windows, a program that compiles PHP, HTML, Javascript and other web files into Windows GUI exes. Now programmers can rapidly develop Windows GUI applications by employing the familiar PHP web paradigm. Developers can use the same code for online and Windows applications with little or no modification.

Simple GUI interface of the compiler makes it easy to create and maintain projects. ZZEE PHPExe also integrates an encoder, so end-users see neither the compiled-in web tree, nor source of PHP, javascript and other files. The runtime which includes a webbrowser, a webserver and PHP 5 is as small as 2.1 Mb. Compiled applications run on Windows Vista / XP / 2000.

Published at Enterprise PHP

• Goldmedia forecasts: Within the next five years the integration of video could lead to a cumulative revenue growth of Euro 4.1 billion in the German eCommerce market
• Video enhanced eCommerce offers a better presentation of goods and improves the online shopping experience
• With video clips eCommerce platforms can take advantage of the TV shopping effect: Seeing goods in action is much more convincing than plain pictures

The extensive use of video will help eCommerce platforms to unleash untapped potential, winning more customers and convincing people to buy more goods online.

In the report eCommerceTV, the Berlin-based media consultancy Goldmedia has analysed the possibilities of using video and has quantified for the first time the potential revenue growth for the German eCommerce market. Goldmedia forecasts that the use of video in Germany will boost revenue in the total eCommerce market in 2012 by 5%. The overall revenue growth triggered by eCommerceTV could add up to Euro 4.1 billion within the next five years.

Chart 1 : Absolute growth of the eCommerce Turnover by using video, Germany 2007-2012

Germany is one of the European front-runners in eCommerce activities and thus a good example of growth potential in this market. 41% of Germans between 16 and 74 years old purchased online in 2007. This places Germany fourth in Europe behind the UK, Denmark and the Netherlands. The EU average is 23%.*

Published at e-Commerce Magazine

Today, BYPsoft announced the availability of DBTyP.NET 2008 Release 3, the newest version of the cross-database comparison tool that compares SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle databases (schema and data). DBTyP.NET 2008 Release 3 is available for download from http://www.bypsoft.com.

With its rich support for schema and data cross-database comparison, DBTyP.NET takes the mystery out of databases, making their comparison practical and easy for programmers and database administrators everywhere. Over and above its powerful comparison capabilities till now, BYPsoft added to the DBTyP.NET 2008 support for schema comparisons for Oracle databases. Full cross database comparison family includes now support for SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle databases in the latest release of DBTyP.NET 2008 for a fraction of the cost of single-database solution.

Published at PHP Community Magazine

Amsterdam, 30 June, 2008 - European E-Commerce and Mail Order Trade Association (EMOTA) and Shop.org, the US-based membership community for digital retail announced today that they are co-hosting the inaugural Global e-commerce Summit October 27-29 in Amsterdam. Themes to be covered at the Summit include: international expansion, multichannel strategies, web 2.0, technological developments and investment capital trends.

"Shoppers around the world are quickly embracing the convenience, selection and cost-savings of online retail," said Dieter Junghans. "Sharing ideas and experiences on these issues is a necessity when we want to meet the needs of our future global customers."

Current speakers include Angela Kapp, Senior Vice President of Estee Lauder Companies (USA); Monica Luechtefeld, Executive Vice President of Office Depot (USA); Mitch Joel, President, Twist Images and author of Six Pixels of Separation (Canada); and Paul Nijhof, CEO, Wehkamp (The Netherlands).

Published at e-Commerce Magazine

The definition of the term DMS differ from a project to another. In most cases we met, archiving systems are independant from the main system and include in addition to document organization and archiving tools, different features that change from a system to another. From the selection we will list below, probably Maarch is the more advanced DMS and archiving Business solution.

Maarch, the Open Source archiving DMS

Maarch is an Open Source framework for archiving and retrieving large volumes of static documents. In a certain way, it is designed as an IDARS product (Integrated Document Archiving and Retrieval System), but without the heaviness of the big ECM products. Maarch is ideal for those who are only interested by storing and exploiting image documents, in compliance with Record Management regulations (Sarbanes-Oaxley, ISO-15489). We think that the Open Source philosophy is very well assorted with long term conservation needs.Maarch is compatible with all relational SQL databases, and is mostly written in PHP 5. Utility modules are written in Visual Basic.

Published at DMS Magazine

Today, Zend Technologies and Brain Alliance Solutions Ltd entered into a partnership and marked the first partnership of the PHP company in Finland. The new partnership entitle Brain Alliance solutions Ltd to resell Zend's products and deliver Zend's PHP related training courses in the country.

Zend's products include Zend Studio for Eclipse, an integrated development environment, Zend Guard to encrypt source code written in PHP, Zend Platform which is a platform for critical and scalable web services, and Zend Core which is a certified stack of PHP.

"With partnership, we strengthen our position as a PHP focused solution provider. And we can offer larger scale of solutions and services to our customers." says Jukka Hassinen, the CEO of Brain Alliance Solutions Ltd. "It has been nice to see that the use of open source technologies such as PHP and Zend Framework has grown in Finland. Our clients have indicated their interest to get training related to PHP and Zend Framework.” says Mr. Hassinen who went to Israel to make the partnership contract with Zend together with consultant Mikko Hämäläinen, at the same they met the one of the founders of PHP, Zeev Suraski.

Published at Enterprise PHP

E-Commerce and Internet retailers need to get their product images, video and rich media delivered smoothly and quickly if they want to move product. Panther does that.

Panther significantly improves the user experience by creating an online environment that is instantaneously gratifying and retains the customer. Panther reduces the risk of poor eCommerce delivery by leveraging the retailer's Internet presence across a robust global network of servers and multiple ISPs. By providing a more reliable and overall faster response rate, customers will be more likely to click and convert. Today, Panther Express is announcing their partnership with the premier eCommerce French website PrinceMinister.com to provide CDN for their online eCommerce service. Below the press release :

Origin Shielding Improves Site Responsiveness By Slashing Hits to Content Providers Database

New York, NY - (June 30, 2008) - Panther Express, a leading global provider of high-performance content delivery services, today announced they have been selected as the content delivery network (CDN) for PriceMinister.com, one of Europe's leading e-commerce sites. Based in France, and serving customers throughout the world, PriceMinister.com is a global online marketplace for connecting buyers and sellers. PriceMinister.com is the second most popular e-commerce site in France and in the top 15 of all French websites overall.

With over 8 million members, PriceMinister.com is an online marketplace for books, CDs, DVDs and games, electronic goods, childcare, fashion, home and garden, automobiles and many other products. Every month, over 30 million people visit the site to buy and sell. Currently there are over 120 million products listed on the site, each with their own graphics and images. Panther delivers those images and graphics.

Published at e-Commerce Magazine