Nikoport

A new project is under development, it is called “SiteRouter“. SiteRouter is a system for managing RSS, Sitemaps between other things - judging by the name, one can easily imagine some of the things that this software hopefully will have. The SiteRouter is being developed as an easy plugable system - this means that with some easy adjustmentes everyone will be able to integrate it into already existing or developing project. The first version is being written in PHP 4, but if it will pass the tests with success, the version in ASP.NET will come right after the first stable release. MySQL is the choice for the database, but there are plans for PostgreSQL as well. At the moment I am looking into releasing it under GPL.

SiteRouter will have a plugin system some day, this will help other databases and action modules integration, development and upgrade. As for the visual part there are some icons that i have found on the net, but which will be eventually replaced in the nearest future.

I am still not sure, when the first version available to the public in general will be available, but i hope, that at some point in October it will reach this stage.

At the moment, in the spare time between projects (a very virtual thing - spare time, i have to say), i am writing 2 new modules for Drupal - one of them is a submodule for using Flash in a advertisement module and the other one is a directory module for Drupal. Both of this modules will be based on the 5th branch of Drupal.

First module was born out of the need for the current project i am doing, when i found out, that Advertisement module has had no support for flash-based ads. While smaller sites are basically using animated gifs (images), the bigger companies are using flash for advertisement. I was told by a couple of different people, that the “big firms” they are or were working for created the biggest the part of the online advertisement in flash. When i was responsible for one of the Fortune 100 sites in Portugal i saw a big percentage of their inner advertisement done in Flash as well. On a personal note, i would add that i do not like flash ads, and prefer the “normal” images - they are lighter and do not appear like a buddy-spam. After finishing this submodule or better “ad type”, i am thinking about submitting the code to the author of the Advertisement module, for his decision of inclusion into the “official package”.

The second module is being born for the other project, since it looks like there is no real directory module for Drupal, which seems to be quite a negative surprise. I am still in the phase of projecting it, but leaving the doubts behind, this module has to be implemented this year, because the website based on drupal, i am going to implement, is going to need it badly.

While the Flash Type submodule is virtually ready and being tested, the Directory module is likely to be finished in the second part of the 2008, mainly because of my newest personal project, which should go live in August this year.

In a very interesting move, CodeGear (aka known as Borland) has released Delphi for PHP, now this is a tool, which by name is quite a thing i have been waiting for. This is a RAD development environment, only for Windows, but remembering that Borland has a good history releasing products for othe platforms i am sure, that in the case of success the next platform will be Linux - there are millions of PHP enthusiasts all around the world, who will be more then excited getting such a tool for development under Linux. If not, there will be hundreds of people who will take over the open source framework of VCL for PHP that Borland(CodeGear) has provided, and implement it for Linux and Os X.

The Delphi for PHP features a very large collection of built-in components as usual for such development tools. There are even some components, that use AJAX for database access (MySQL and Interbase are supported, more database support is promised in the nearest future). The price for those who will buy it until the 31st of march is 261 euros, after that the price will rise to 308 euros. If its good as i hope, this is a software, i am going to get in the next couple of hours. =O)

I am downloading the Trial now, and for me it is the most excited and unexpected product for quite some time. I hope, that CodeGear with this Delphi for PHP will have a big list of successes as they have had in 80s and 90s. I am surely going to drop a few lines here on this article about the Delphi for PHP in the nearest future. Is this the tool, that is going to change the situation for dying Borland (CodeGear), and reposition the market around the PHP, ignore for so many years by the major developers ? I hope so.

Who’s going to be the next one to adopt their tool for PHP ? Microsoft with a .NET for PHP ?

As weird as it could appear a couple of years ago, right now i think it is slowly becoming a possibility - PHP.NET. Microsoft is collaborating with Zend for creating a FastCGI module for a new IIS 7.0, and parallel they are developing iron python for .NET. Sure thing that it is still far from becoming a reality, but from the other side, microsoft has never managed to motivate the biggest part of the internet community development moving from PHP to some of their technologies and they’ve been trying a lot lately - like releasing community editions of the Visual Studio and SQL Server.

This week the world have seen the collaboration announcement between Novell and Microsoft, in which (as usual) Novell is going to pay about 40 million dollars to Microsoft. For me this all is a part of a bigger Microsoft’s plan for advancing on the web market. Thinking from the Microsoft’s point of view i would say, that it makes a lot of sense in implementing Php.NET, cause with a commercial solution some of the developers would chose to buy Microsoft products, especially those developers, who are already using Visual Studio products. Being a regular VS user, i confess that this could be an option for a lot of people i know from the developers area. This could help Microsoft, conquer the part of the market, which since the very beginning being ignoring opportunity to pay the fees to them…

The most important aspect is that PHP’s implementation for .NET is not something from the other world, as they have now managed to implement python and i know about some commercial adaptations of Cobol and Fortran, so PHP’s adaptation in every sense would make a reasonable solution for Microsoft, but would it be so reasonable for end developers and users ? How would Zend act in such situation, and what about Sun’s Java …