Oracle Technology Network has posted a new series in their PHPDeveloper Center, titled "The Oracle+PHP Cookbook". Regardless of whether you are a newbie developing with the dynamite combination of PHP and Oracle or an experienced hand harnessing its power for developing enterprise-scale applications, the recipes they have in store are bound to dish out valuable technical information on the new (or rather lately discovered), yet powerful combination of Oracle and PHP.
"Welcome to the Oracle+PHP Cookbook! Whether you are a Web developer or enterprise developer looking to combine the robustness of the Oracle engine with the simplicity, performance, and ease-of-use of PHP, you are bound to find several interesting "recipes" here, each contributed by PHP coders, that will help you take full advantage of both technologies."
The first three articles, in what looks like a very comprehensive series, are now online:
Working with Dates and Times in Oracle and PHP: If you're new to PHP or Oracle, working out how to handle dates efficiently can be tricky. You may have strategies, which you've applied successfully on other platforms, but will they fit to the combination of Oracle and PHP?
This Oracle+PHP recipe, by Harry Fuecks, should help you understand the functionality, available in both PHP and Oracle, for working with dates and times and how they relate to each other. In doing so, it should help you decide where to draw line in deciding which technology will handle what, and answer questions like "Do I calculate the difference between these two dates in PHP or Oracle?"
Binding Variables in Oracle and PHP: In this "Oracle+PHP Cookbook" HowTo, by Larry Ullman, you will learn how to bind variables when executing Oracle queries from a PHP script. By applying the techniques detailed in this article, and code examples to your own Web applications, you can easily improve their performance and security.
Working with LOBs in Oracle and PHP: Working with Oracle types like VARCHAR2 is fine, but what if you need to be able to store more than its 4,000-byte limit in one go? For this task, you need one of Oracle's Long Object (LOB) types, which in turn requires that you learn how to use the PHP API for working with LOBs. That in itself can be daunting for those unfamiliar with it.
In this "Oracle+PHP Cookbook" HowTo, by Harry Fuecks you will learn the available LOB types and issues related to them, then explore examples of common LOB operations in PHP.
Recently, Zend Core for Oracle (ZCO) matured from beta to GA status, and is available as a free download from Zend. "Zend Core for Oracle, developed in partnership with Zend Technologies, supports businesses using PHP with Oracle Database for mission-critical Web applications. It provides a seamless out-of-the-box experience delivering a stable, high performance, easy-to-install and supported PHP development and production environment fully integrated with the Oracle Database."
