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Friday, April 29, 2011

PEAR :: PHPUnit


Even good programmers make mistakes. The difference between a good programmer and a bad programmer is that the good programmer uses tests to detect his mistakes as soon as possible. The sooner you test for a mistake the greater your chance of finding it and the less it will cost to find and fix. This explains why leaving testing until just before releasing software is so problematic. Most errors do not get caught at all, and the cost of fixing the ones you do catch is so high that you have to perform triage with the errors because you just cannot afford to fix them all.
Testing with PHPUnit is not a totally different activity from what you should already be doing. It is just a different way of doing it. The difference is between testing, that is, checking that your program behaves as expected, and performing a battery of tests, runnable code-fragments that automatically test the correctness of parts (units) of the software. These runnable code-fragments are called unit tests.
The goal of using automated tests is to make fewer mistakes. While your code will still not be perfect, even with excellent tests, you will likely see a dramatic reduction in defects once you start automating tests. Automated tests give you justified confidence in your code. You can use this confidence to take more daring leaps in design (Refactoring), get along with your teammates better (Cross-Team Tests), improve relations with your customers, and go home every night with proof that the system is better now than it was this morning because of your efforts.

PHP DAO/VO Generator


phpdao is a tool to generate Data Access Objects and Value Objects for PHP4/MySQL web applications. This greatly improves the readability of PHP scripts that use a MySQL database.
The DAO and VO technique is widely used in Java web applications, but PHP webapps surprisingly usually overlook the benefits they bring. That's why phpdao was created.

What's the Benefit?

  1. All the SQL statements used by your application can be in a single layer of PHP classes. Therefore, there is greater isolation from your database layer.
  2. Your PHP application code will need no SQL statements of its own. Therefore, your PHP code is simpler and clearer.
  3. The Value Objects make it obvious what each table row contains.

The tool consists of three elements:

  1. A Python script: this generates PHP code from an SQL schema. The schema must be in a fixed format; at present, the format as produced by phpMyAdmin is supported.
  2. A PHP class: this is for wrapping SQL calls. This is used by the generated PHP classes. You are not required to use it, but it provides some debugging facilities.
  3. Example code illustrating possible usage of the tool.

How you use it:

  1. Get your table schemas, e.g. by exporting from phpMyAdmin to a text file.
  2. Run phpdao's writeVo.py script to create the VO and DAO classes.
  3. In your PHP pages:
    • Include the VO/DAO classes,
    • Create DAO instances and call the database access methods.

Extension:

The DAOs are generated as the sum of the automatically-generated PHP plus any manual additions you need to include. These might wrap up special SQL statements in the DAO layer for example. Or they may provide caching or dictionary functions or whatever.

Read Full Details @ phpdao.sourceforge.net

DAO generator for PHP and Mysql

Data Access Object: design pattern, access to data varies depending on the source of the data. Access to persistent storage, such as to a database, varies greatly depending on the type of storage (relational databases, object-oriented databases, flat files, and so forth) and the vendor implementation.
This DAO generator generate php classes which provide operations on Mysql database (remember if you want use transactions use innodb engine).
Please use for each table primary key and this column type must be int. Dao generator doesn't generate classes for table which doesn't containt primary key.
In general it is not recommended to have table without primary key.



How to generate classes
- Download latest version of DAO generator for PHP and Mysql
- unzip file
- set connection to database properties in file templates/class/dao/sql/ConnectionProperty.class.php
- run file generate.php (for example: http://localhost/phpdao/generate.php)
- generated classes will put in 'generated' folder



How does it work
Application generate three classes for one table (table must contain primary key). First class is Domain Transfer Object, example
Second is interface that define operations on table example
Third class implements preceding interface example
Now you can write your non standard queries whith where not generated, for example from two tables. Here is an example


How to write non standard queries:
In directory: generated\class\mysql\ext this tool generates empty classes. In that classes you can write your methods likes in example. DAOFactory now return that classes instances. So when you call DAOFactory::getContentDAO() you have all methods from class ContentMySqlDAO and ContentMySqlExtDAO. When you write methods in ContentMySqlExtDAO and you will regenerate classes, this file will not be override. Download examples and open file ContentMySqlExtDAO.class.php to see how you can write new sql queries.

Read Full Details @ phpdao.com/ 

[Mysql] Query to get data for the last 7 days

Here's how to extract the data using mysql: (it's very easy)


select date(creationdate),count(*) from content where date(creationdate) between date_sub(curdate(),interval 7 day) and date_sub(curdate(),interval 1 day) group by date(creationdate);


The above query gives you count for last 7 days


Read further about date_sub @

Uploading a file using Curl in PHP

Here's how to upload files using curl in php: (it's very easy)
notice the @ infront of the file path, this is the magic part.



<?php
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 0);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)");
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, _VIRUS_SCAN_URL);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
    // same as <input type="file" name="file_box">
    $post = array(
        "file_box"=>"@/path/to/myfile.jpg",
    );
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post); 
    $response = curl_exec($ch);
?>


Read Full Details @

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

how to check apache performance

Apache has an excellent command which allows the administrator of the website to monitor apache's performance

the command is
apache2ctl fullstatus

sample output is as follows
Server uptime: 9 minutes 42 seconds
Total accesses: 4584 - Total Traffic: 11.5 MB
CPU Usage: u335.75 s91.24 cu0 cs0 - 73.4% CPU load
7.88 requests/sec - 20.2 kB/second - 2626 B/request
13 requests currently being processed, 46 idle workers

Friday, April 1, 2011

KLogger: A Simple Logging Class for PHP

Since the latest release of wpSearch, a couple issues have cropped up and are slated to be fixed shortly. Some of the issues, although, are a bit harder to catch without a good set of debugging tools for PHP. The classic example of such a tool would be a log file logger.
As soon as I realized the need for a logger while developing wpSearch, I decided to check to see if one had already existed on the internet — someone had surely created a simple logging class and made it available before .. I would think. I’m a believer in the C programmer’s motto “build upon the work of others”, so checking to see if someone else has done the same thing prior to starting a project comes naturally.
After a little browsing, I couldn’t find what I was looking for. Put plainly, I wanted a logging class that:
  • Checked permissions prior to logging
  • Had a priority heirarchy built in ( Debug, Info, Error, and Fatal Message Levels)
  • Logged to plain old text files
  • Managed file handling cleanly (Open the file once, close the file once)
  • Managed resources (make sure the file gets closed)
Not too complicated. This logging class would require around 100 lines of code.
Another option involved using logging functions available in Zend, or the logging class provided in PEAR. These libraries were a little overkill for what I needed, so I passed.
I decided to write of the class myself, and it has turned out to be pretty handy. I figured someone else would probably find it useful as well, so I have posted it on it’s own project page. Click here to go to the KLogger project page.

Read Full Details@

Log4php - a standard logger for PHP

Log4php is logging framework for PHP at the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), sponsored by the Apache Logging Services project.
Log4PHP has completed graduation in March 2010.
log4php supports:
  • Configuration through xml and properties file (same structure as log4j).
  • File, RollingFile, DailyFile, Echo, Console, Mail, PDO, PHP error, Syslog or NT events and Socket appenders.
  • Simple, TTCC, Pattern, Html and Xml Layouts.
  • Nested (NDC) and Mapped (MDC) Diagnostic Contexts. 
Read Full Details @

    DataVision - a Open Source reporting tool

    DataVision is an Open Source reporting tool similar to Crystal Reports. Reports can be designed using a drag-and-drop GUI. They may be run, viewed, and printed from the application or exported as HTML, XML, PDF, Excel, LaTeX2e, DocBook, or tab- or comma-delimited text files. The output files produced by LaTeX2e and DocBook can in turn be used to produce PDF, text, HTML, PostScript, and more.
    DataVision is written in Java and runs almost anywhere. It can generate reports from databases or text data files. Any database with an available JDBC driver should work: Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Informix, hsqldb, Microsoft Access, Progress, and more. Columns read from text files can be separated by any character.
    Report descriptions are stored as XML files. This means you can not only use the DataVision GUI but you may also edit reports using your favorite text editor.
    DataVision was developed by Jim Menard (jimm@io.com). The project's leader is now Frank W. Zammetti (fzlists@omnytex.com). The latest version of DataVision can be found on the DataVision Web page. New releases are also announced on Freshmeat and on the DataVision mailing list.

    RLIB - a open source reporting tool

    An XML based tool for automated reporting


    RLIB is an advanced reporting engine that generates professional reports in PDF, HTML, CSV, and text formats from a simple XML definition language.

    RLIB runs on both Linux and Windows, and features bindings for Perl, PHP, Python, .NET, and Java.

    RLIB is free and open source software licensed under the GPL. For organizations not wishing to comply with the GPL, commercial licensing is also available. 


    Read Full Details @

    Open Source Business Intelligence

    Open Source Solutions have become serious alternatives to traditional proprietary licensed software with over 25 open source projects providing a wide variety of tools for data warehousing and full BI suites.  Clarise Z. Doval Santos and Joseph A. di Paolantonio have been studying open source projects related to data analytics, data warehousing and business intelligence for over five years.  This lens, with supporting blog and wiki on the subject, provides the results of that research.  This lens provides an additional tool for finding and recording information related to open source solutions for BI.  This research is sponsored by InterActive Systems & Consuting, Inc, which provides strategic consulting and project management through InterASC Professional Services,, for BI, collaboration & distributed workgroup solutions, and hosting of open source applications through the TeleInterActive Network.  Since 1995, Clarise and Joseph have worked together helping people gather data, turn it into information through analysis, and share the results through collaboration tools.

    Links to OSS BI Suites 

    Communities, Projects and Companies supporting OSS BI Suites

    One thing with which we're struggling is how to define a BI Suite. Must it be a comprehensive, end-to-end solution? Since we don't know of any commercial BI Suite that started out as a full tilt boogie, everything from ETL to Portal solution, we're not going to demand that of open source software BI Suties. So, if a project unites more than one tool for creating a BI solution, 'tis a suite. We think.
    BEE Project
    BEE is one of the first open source BI Suites, having been around since 2002. It provides ETL, ROLAP, reporting, integration with the R Project, is written in PERL, and primarily supports MySQL.
    JasperSoft BI Suite
    The Jasper BI Suite provides a framework for report automation and ad hoc reporting, as well as full OLAP and ETL capabilities. Components include JasperReports, iReport, JasperServer, JasperAnalysis and JasperETL.
    Openi
    Openi provides a web-driven interface to OLAP, relational, statistical and data mining sources giving BI integrators user interface, report definition and connector tools.
    Pentaho
    Pentaho BI Suite provides a framework for a full array of capabilities: Reporting, Analysis, Dashboards, Data Integration, Data Mining and Workflow.
    SpagoBI
    SpagoBI is a BI platform drawing its components from the ObjectWeb consurtium. Tools include metadata management, ETL, Reporting, Analysis, and Dashboards.

    Links to OSS ETL Tools 

    Communiteis, Projects and Companies supporting OSS ETL Tools

    Extract, Transform and Load is often the most difficult and time consuming aspect of a data warehouse project. Tools that help the BI integrator to create, manage and maintain the rules for extraction of disparate data from multiple sources, transformation into a standard and clean data set, and the timely loading into the data repository, ODS or data warehouse is very important. Some of these tools provide EAI capability as well.
    KETL
    KETL is an ETL for high volume transactions developed by Kinetic Networks.
    Enhydra Octopus
    Enhydra Octopus is part of the ObjectWeb GForge project, providing JDBC Data Transformations
    Pequel ETL
    Pequel ETL is, according to their SourceForge description, a comprehensive and high performance data processing/transform system. It features a simple, user-friendly event driven scripting interface that transparently generates & executes highly efficient Perl/C code. Uses: ETL, datawarehousing, statistics, and data-cleansing.
    Clover ETL
    Clover ETL is an open source Java based framework for building data transformations (ETL applications).
    CpluSQL
    The cplusql distributed ETL tool extracts and transforms row based data from databases and flat files for terabyte scale datawarehouse loading.
    JetStream
    JetStream is the first open source ETL tool that we used. It is described as a Java Extraction Transformation Service for Transmitting Records & Exchanging Application Metadata: a Java-based ETL/EAI tool.
    Apatar
    Apatar ETL tool's modular architecture delivers 1. Visual job designer/mapping 2. Connectivity to all major data sources 3. Flexible Deployment Options (GUI, or server engine with JVM, or embedded).
    KETTLE
    Don't confuse KETL and KETTLE - they're not related. K.E.T.T.L.E (Kettle ETTL Environment) is a meta-data driven ETTL tool (Extraction, Transformation, Transportation & Loading). Kettle is also available as Pentaho Data Integration.
    openDigger
    OpenDigger is a java based compiler for the xETL language. xETL is a language specifically projected to read, manipulate and write data in any format and database. With OpenDigger/XETL you can build powerful Extraction-Transformation-Loading (ETL) prograns.
    Talend
    Talend Open Studio is a mature product, three years in the making before coming out for download. * developer tools: to create process * administrator: to manage distributed process on a grid architecture * launcher tools: to launch process * PAM: Process Activities Monitor The ETL language is PERL, and JAVA. But Perl provide many more connectors than do the java libraries.

    Links to OSS OLAP Tools 

    Communiteis, Projects and Companies supporting OSS OLAP Tools

    On-Line Analytical Processing tools comes in several flavors: MDDB OLAP or MOLAP, Relational OLAP or ROLAP and HOLAP - then there is "H is for hybrid" HOLAP, and there are open source software projects for each type. This list below includes engines or servers as well as front-ends for OLAP or MDDB use.
    Mondrian
    Mondrian is one of the oldest open source BI components, having been registered in 2001. It is also used as the OLAP engine in other open source software OLAP and BI Suite projects such as JasperAnalysis and Pentaho Analysis. Pentaho provides support for the Mondrian forums.
    JasperAnalysis
    JasperAnalysis is part of the Jasper BI Suite, available from the JasperForge through JasperIntelligence. Based upon Mondrian and jPivot, JasperAnalysis provides full OLAP standards compliance and analytical capabilities.
    PALO
    PALO is a recent entry to the open source software OLAP field. It's different in that it is esentially an add-in for Micorsoft Excel. PALO provides a MDDB for Excel, with future plans to allow access through other APIs as well. From their homepage... "Palo is an advanced data store for Microsoft Excel that allows you to handle large amounts of Excel data on a small number of worksheets. In addition, it also allows you to share Excel data real-time with your collegues."
    Pentaho Analysis Mondrian
    Pentaho Analysis uses Mondrian at its core to provide for variable analysis, graphical representations of data, and drill down.
    JPivot
    JPivot is a JSP tag library supporting XMLA that provides a front-end OLAP table to the Mondrian OLAP engine, allowing typical OLAP functions such as slice-and-dice, drill-down and roll-up.
    pocOLAP
    pocOLAP is a web-based, cross-tab reporting tool written in Java, that also allows for drill-down. The name comes from "poco", meaning "little" in the Italian and Spanish.
    OpenOLAP for MySQL
    Currently a Japanese only version of OpenOLAP ported from PostgreSQL to MySQL. The PostgreSQL version is hosted on sourceforge.jp.
    OpenOLAP
    OLAP tool for PostgreSQL

    Links to OSS Reporting Tools 

    Communiteis, Projects and Companies supporting OSS OLAP Tools

    Reporting tools can be simple or complex, web-based or not, with designers or not. Here's the list.
    JasperReports
    JasperReports is one of the oldies as well, starting in 2001. More recently a company, JasperSoft has been formed to invest in JasperReports, as well as to provide support, training and various other services.
    Agata Report
    From their web site..."Agata Report is a Database Reporting Tool and EIS tool, MIS tool (graph generation), like Crystal Reports. Its written in PHP-GTK and allows you to edit and get SQL results from several databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, SyBase, MsSql, FrontBase, DB2, Informix and InterBase) as as PostScript, plain text, HTML, XML, PDF, or spreadsheet (CSV) formats through its graphical interface. You can also define levels, subtotals, and a grand total for the report, merge the data into a document, generate address labels, or even generate a complete ER-diagram from your database."
    DataVision
    DataVision is an Open Source Report Writer that allows drag-and-drop report design through its GUI. It is written in Java and can connect to any database supporting JDBC.
    OpenReports
    From their website... "OpenReports is a flexible open source web reporting solution that allows users to generate dynamic reports in a browser. OpenReports uses JasperReports, an excellent full featured open source reporting engine, and was developed using leading open source components including WebWork, Velocity, Quartz, and Hibernate."
    OpenRPT
    OpenRPT is a full featured, cross-platform SQL report writer that stores its report definitions as XML, and has a WYWIWYG report writer that can be used in stand-alone or embedded fashion.
    JFreeReport
    jFreeReport is standalone Java report library with a nice series of capabilities and a decent community around it. In January, 2006, jFreeReport became a part of the Pentaho suite.
    iReport
    iReport is now part of the JasperSoft tools and is available as an individual download or as part of the Jasper BI Suite.

    Links to OSS Databases Projects 

    Communiteis, Projects and Companies supporting OSS RDBMS Projects

    There are quite a few open source RDBMS, though few are optimized for query within a VLDB environment.
    EnterpriseDB
    The EnterpriseDB project takes PostgreSQL and adds Oracle and PL/SQL compatibility to it, making a rather powerful RDBMS open source solution.
    Derby
    Derby is the Apache database project, written in pure java to have a small footprint.
    Firebird
    Firebird is a RDBMS written C and C++ that provides many ANSI SQL-99 features as well as stored procedures and triggers. It is basd on the source code released by Borland -> Inprise -> Borland in 2000, and has exsisted in one form or another since 1981
    Ingres
    CA released the source code for the vernerable Ingres RDBMS and formed the new Ingres corporation in the November of 2005 under their own CATOS license.
    MySQL
    MySQL is reportedly the most deployed open source RDBMS out there. It has proven suitable for VLDB implementations allowing a robust store now, query anytime architecture.
    PostgreSQL
    Professor Michael Stonebraker of the Univeristy of California at Berkeley created Postgres as a successor to his other database, Ingres, in 1986. Postgres became Ilustra joined Informix acquired by IBM and found new life in the lab as Postgres95, which was redone and open sourced in 1996 as PostgreSQL Click on the "About" and then "History" link from the main site. Fun stuff, and I even remember it all happening. PostgreSQL is being revamped in a branch distribution specifically for data warehousing in the Bizgres project - see the BI Suites links.
    Oracle Berkeley DB ( Sleepycat)
    Oracle bought Sleepycat Software. Sleepycat's open source DB came is now released as Oracle Berkeley DB. The three flavors are: Berkeley DB: A transactional storage engine for un-typed data in basic key/value data structures Berkeley DB Java Edition: A pure Java version of Berkeley DB optimized for the Java environment Berkeley DB XML: A native XML database with XQuery-based access to documents stored in containers and indexed based on their content

    Links to OSS BI Development Tools 

    Communiteis, Projects and Companies supporting OSS Roll Your Own

    There are open source tools, platforms and standards to help you "roll your own" BI solutions. These are often very good starting points for experienced development teams, and can help to fill in the gaps in both proprietary and open source solutions.
    Eclipse BIRT
    Eclipse is the IDE for Java and J2EE, and BIRT is, basically, its reporting plug-in.
    EFEU
    EFEU is a programming environment to develop C-programs and libraries. It is often pointed to as facilitating the development of ETL and reporting software.
    JpGraph
    JpGraph is an OO Graph drawing library for PHP that is very useful for data visualization and presentation.
    PostgreSQL MDDB
    The linked article describes using EFEU with PostgreSQL to create a multi-dimensional database for use in OLAP.

    Links to DW Sources 


    TDWI News
    Developments in the business intelligence and data warehousing industry tracked by The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI)
    DM Review Portal
    DMReview.com, website of the DM Review magazine, provides portal of information on business intelligence, analytics, integration and data warehousing
     
    READ FULL DETAILS @