Phly, boy, phly
the weblog and site of Matthew Weier O'Phinney

Got the official notification: I passed the Zend PHP Certification Exam, and can now report I'm a Zend Certified Engineer (ZCE)!

Thanks go to my bosses at NGA for giving me the opportunity to attend php|Tropics, to Marco Tabini for offering the ZCE exam as part of the php|Tropics conference fee, and to my wife, Jen, and daughter, Maeve, for putting up with me while I studied... and being good sports about having to stay home while I went to Cancun. Hopefully next time I can take you along!

Paul Jones has written an interesting piece about documentation in the PEAR project, in which he argues very convincingly for using wikis for end user documentation.

I actually think that last point bears repeating: using wikis for end user documentation. I talked to Paul about this issue at php|Tropics, and both of us use phpDocumentor quite religiously. However, API documentation is very different from end user documentation. And the issue with documentation at the PEAR project has to do with the fact that there are many projects with little or no end user documentation -- which often makes it difficult for a developer to determine how a module might be used.

The often-cited barrier for this is that end user documentation on the PEAR website must be done in DocBook format.

Twice in the past week I found myself needing to create or alter database search functionality in some APIs for work. In doing this work, I discovered some techniques that make this process much easier. In line with The Pragmatic Programmer, I found myself exploring the DRY principle (Don't Repeat Yourself), and looking into code generation (this time, SQL) -- basically to exploit my inherent laziness and to make my job easier.

I thought I'd share some of the principles I've discovered for myself as I haven't read much information on the subject. Some of this may be rudimentary for some readers or those who work with more advanced abstraction layers (I suspect DB_DataObject may do much of this), but hopefully the information can be a useful reference for others (myself included).

We did it... we moved, again.

However, unlike our previous two moves, which were interstate, this time we stayed in the same state. The same county, even. What made (makes; we're still finishing up as I write this) this one so jarring is the fact that we're going from the rural mountainside to the fourth floor of a new apartment/condo building adjoining an interstate spur.

Why would we do this?