With a whole boatload of changes (which can be found at
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/news-5-0-13.html) this latest release candidate from MySQL AB looks to be quite worth the download. To get your copy, go to
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html.
If you have scripts that use the
open_basedir command, you might want to take a look at the latest from Secunia. A non-critical bug has been found, that has yet been unpatched - to read the full details, go to
http://secunia.com/advisories/16971/ and we'll keep an eye out for the patch.
These have all been the subjects of security alerts ranging from moderately critical to less critical, and all need to be patched from the appropriate vendors. For more information,
view the list of security alerts from Secunia, or the individual package sites.
The powers over at Zend keep growing, thanks to an addition to their Board of Directors. Heavy hitters Marc Andreessen (of Netscape fame) and Gaurav Dhillon (formerly of Informatica) have joined the ranks to guide Zend successfully into the future. If you'd like to read the press release in its entirety, visit Zend's site at
http://www.zend.com/news/zendpr.php?id=107. You can also read related articles from
CNet,
Reuters,
InformationWeek, and
Forbes (among numerous others).
Now more than ever, the PHP book market is flourishing with several new PHP-related titles being released recently:
And in the hopper (i.e., soon to be published):
A new feature at DevShed offers a newscast akin to the traditional "11 o'clock" news in their "Tech News TV" weekly tech broadcasts. A little rough around the edges, but interesting nonetheless. And like a podcast, you can do other things while listening in (or you can watch the "tech chick" if you prefer). I guess I better start showering again in case PHPBuilder decides to follow suit, eh? At any rate, you can watch your tech TV (or view/listen to narrated tutorials) at devshed:
http://www.devshed.com/c/b/PHP/.
I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't include what's new at PEAR and PECL. Recent PEAR releases include:
- XML_Serializer 0.18.0 - Creates XML files from data structures and vice versa.
- Image_Tools 0.3.0 - Tools collection for images
- Date 1.4.4 - Date and Time Zone Classes
- Validate_BE 0.1.1 - Validation class for Belgium
- HTML_Progress2 2.0.0 - How to include a loading bar in your XHTML documents quickly and easily.
- HTML_Progress 1.2.4 - How to include a loading bar in your XHTML documents quickly and easily.
- Image_Graph 0.7.0 - A package for displaying (numerical) data as a graph/chart/plot.
- Image_Canvas 0.2.2 - A package providing a common interface to image drawing, making image source code independent on the library used.
- Services_Yahoo 0.1.1 - Provides access to the Yahoo! Web Services
- HTML_AJAX 0.2.1 - PHP and JavaScript AJAX library
- File_Passwd 1.1.6 - Manipulate many kinds of password files
- Validate_CA 0.1.1 - Validation class for Canada
- Pager 2.3.4 - Data paging class
- Image_XBM 0.9.0RC1 - Manipulate XBM images
And for PECL, we had:
- expect - PHP extension for expect library
- pecl_http - Extended HTTP Support
- runkit - Replace, rename, and remove user defined functions and classes.
As always, you can download or learn more about these packages at http://pear.php.net/ and http://pecl.php.net/.