PHP Devs

[TG]

Any of you blighters ever mucked around with CakePHP (http://www.cakephp.org/)?

I've taken a look at the bruhaha about it, and it seems pretty cool. Very much like Ruby on Rails but in PHP (well, in my very limited opinion that is).

Anyway, I've got an idea web application/site, and I came across Cake and thought it might be just the ticket for what I have in mind.
In terms of design, do any of you (assuming we have any PHP Devs here) ever used diagramming software for figuring out the layout/flow of your sites?

I've looked at a couple of different packages (all OSS or free), namely Dia, ArgoUML and StarUML, but none of them have quite had the functionality I'm looking for.

How about database design? I've mucked about with DBDesigner (http://fabforce.net/dbdesigner4/) before, a couple of years ago, but now I see there is MySQL Workbench (http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/workbench/5.0.html) instead, which I have only installed so far, and not played with.

What dev environment do you use? I'm mucking about with Eclipse PDT at the moment, which seems to be the right way to go, especially since I've got it working with the Cake framework.

Anyway, I need to get this freaking idea out of my head and into reality. This nitpicking over the tool-base is driving me nuts (and I want to do it properly, hence the design first).

[WAJKILLER2]

I hate PHP, it has the most messyest code ever. The syntax sucks. I love the flow and fucntionality of .net but dispise the fact that it is microsoft. I have a legal version of visual studio 2003 and will never pay the money for it. I ripped it from a company that went broke.

MySQL workbech is quite cool, have it here somewhere havent installed it again on the new pc.
http://www.phpdevelopmentstudio.com/php-development/tools/features.html
Looks like a cool dev suite. I cant find any real good development ide's for php. Pity
I do a lot of joomla sites and have to dig into the php every now and then and hence have to get my head around php. Cant stand it but got no choice i get more php based work in than .net.
I think rainy can shed some light on the subject.

[TG]

I see php development studio is essentially eclipse with some plugins. Pretty much what PDT is for eclipse anyway.

[doobiwan]

WAJ, you realise there's a completely Open Source implementation on .NET called Mono?
http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page
It's not some propellorhead thing either, the project is run by Novell, who actually use it in some of their Linux desktop apps.

As far as the tools go, they have their own IDE (http://monodevelop.org/Main_Page), but you can get official Microsoft Visual Studio express tools for free. I'm busy playing with the new 2008's at the moment.


As for PHP? PHP is for web designers who don't get OO. :p

[sss]

lets make a perpetual motion machine instead

[WAJKILLER2]

I know about the mono project, pretty cool however the open source community does not really acept it. Microsoft invented. I am very keen to try dev on it. I like the new version of visual studio 2008, havent had much time to play with it doing more joomla stuff and cutouts for companys, to tell the truth i prefer doing html templates for companies makes dam good money easy and quick.

TG i saw the PDT ide, gonna download it and see how it works.

[TG]

Waj, it's still eclipse, so it will probably be much the same. I think the differences come in on how well it handles the syntax highlighting, code completion, etc.

[SlappY]

VS2008 will blow anything out the water.
Something else that might be worth looking into is a PHP plugin for VS2008.
You can even write your own compiled languages with it (that get compiled to MSIL), so I dont see why someone would not have made a PHP plugin (Being basic scripting and all) for it by now, given the popularity of it.

[SlappY]

Ahh... here we go. Well it is one example of it:

http://vs-php-for-visual-studio-2005.jcx-software-corp.qarchive.org/

[SintaxErr]

Last year i converted a lot of MYSQL databases to either SQL or Oracle. They seem to handle up to a cretain size and fall over. I'm not running it down. Just something to consider.

[TG]

Ok, well I'm not too worried about size at this point.

[SlappY]

Last year i converted a lot of MYSQL databases to either SQL or Oracle. They seem to handle up to a cretain size and fall over. I'm not running it down. Just something to consider.

:D Prolly a lot to do with bad design. Facebook is running mySQL if I am not mistaken? They seem to handle size plenty fine. Still, SQL Server comes with a helava lot more toys to play with :D

[doobiwan]

From what I understand MySQL is very much a "Read" Database and performs very well in lookups etc, but not so well with transactions, inserts, that sort of thing. The other thing with MySQL is that there's so many different blooming engines to choose from!

I've generally avoided MySQL for work stuff. Never mind the stored procs etc, the fact that "relational integrity" is still considered a new feature scares the c@rp out of me! I'd sooner use SQL express if I have the option.