Zend Framework 1.7.0 is now available

New Zend Framework released with many new components and features.

Zend Framework 1.7.0 is now available from the Zend Framework download site:

http://framework.zend.com/download/latest

This release introduces many new components and features, including:

• Zend_Amf with support for AMF0 and AMF3 protocols
• Dojo Toolkit 1.2.1
• Support for dijit editor available in the Dojo Toolkit
• Zend_Service_Twitter
• ZendX_JQuery in extras library
• Metadata API in Zend_Cache
• Google book search API in Zend_Gdata
• Preliminary support for GData Protocol v2 in Zend_Gdata
• Support for skip data processing in Zend_Search_Lucene
• Support for Open Office XML documents in Zend_Search_Lucene indexer
• Performance enhancements in Zend_Loader, Zend_Controller, and server components
• Zend_Mail_Storage_Writable_Maildir enhancements for mail delivery
• Zend_Tool in incubator
• Zend_Text_Table for formatting table using characters
• Zend_ProgressBar
• Zend_Config_Writer
• ZendX_Console_Unix_Process in the extras library
• Zend_Db_Table_Select support for Zend_Paginator
• Global parameters for routes
• Using Chain-Routes for Hostname-Routes via Zend_Config
• I18N improvements
o Application wide locale for all classes
o Data retrieving methods are now static
o Additional cache handling methods in all I18N classes
o Zend_Translate API simplified
• File transfer enhancements
o Support for file elements in subforms
o Support for multifile elements
o Support for MAX_FILES_SIZE in form
o Support for breaking validation chain
o Support for translation of failure ,messages
o New IsCompressed, IsImage, ExcludeMimeType, ExcludeExtension validators
o Support for FileInfo extension in MimeType validator
• Zend_Db_Table_Select adapater for Zend_Paginator
• Support for custom adapters in Zend_Paginator
• More flexible handling of complex types in Zend_Soap


The Zend Framework team would like to thank everyone who made this release possible. As always, our generous ZF community has provided countless new features, bug fixes, documentation translations, etc. We'd also like to thank Adobe Systems and Wade Arnold for contributing the new Zend_Amf component. A big thanks to PHP Belgium and everyone who participated in bug hunt day and/or the Zend Framework bug hunt week.


Source:- prlog.org/

Zend Framework 1.7 Includes DB2/400 Adapter

Zend Technologies, the commercial entity behind the open source PHP programming language and its related development tools, has delivered a new release of its suite of PHP tools. Zend Framework 1.7 includes a general release of the new DB2/400 adapter introduced earlier this year, which should improve the interoperability of PHP applications and DB2/400 data. The update also includes various other AJAX-related enhancements.

Zend provided an early release of the DB2/400 adapter with the delivery of Zend Core for IBM i 2.6 in September. At the time, Zend said the new adapter would provide better, faster, and more secure access to existing data and applications residing on System i server.

After poking and prodding at beta sites and the resolution of various technical issues, the DB2/400 adapter was declared ready for prime time at Adobe Systems's MAX conference in San Francisco last month, which was the venue for the launch of Zend Framework 1.7.

Zend Framework 1.7 brings other enhancements, in addition to the new data adapter. For instance, load times have improved by 25 to 50 percent, Zend says, and support for the Action Message Format (AMF) data transfer protocol should improve the product's integration with Adobe's Flex and Flash programming technologies for creating rich Internet applications (RIAs).

Other enhancements include a new editor for the Dojo Toolkit, called dijit. Dojo, which was introduced to System i shops with Zend Core for IBM i 2.6, is an open-source collection of JavaScript tools designed to help developers implement graphical and architectural elements of AJAX applications. Zend Framework 1.7 also introduces support for JQuery, a popular AJAX library that was contributed by the Zend community to the larger open source community.

In further news, Zend is now selling support subscriptions for IBM i customers utilizing Zend Framework 1.7. The subscriptions give customers access to Zend resources for gaining support over the Web and troubleshooting or answering basic questions. The standard support package costs $1,500 and gives customers access to five Web-based incidents and two hours of consulting, while the premium package, which costs $2,500, provides 10 Web-based incidents and three hours of consulting.

Source:- itjungle.com/

The world's fastest computers are Linux computers

There are fast computers, and then there are Linux fast computers. Every six months, the Top 500 organization announces "its ranked list of general purpose systems that are in common use for high end applications." In other words, supercomputers. And, as has been the case for years now, the fastest of the fast are Linux computers.

As Jay Lyman, an analyst at The 451 Group points out, Linux is only growing stronger in supercomputing. "When considered as the primary OS or part of a mixed-OS supersystem, Linux is now present in 469 of the supercomputer sites, 93.8% of the Top500 list. This represents about 10 more sites than in November 2007, when Linux had presence in 91.8% of the systems. In fact, Linux is the only operating system that managed gains in the November 2008 list. A year ago, Linux was the OS for 84.6% of the top supercomputers. In November 2008, the open source OS was used in 87.8% of the systems. Compare this to Unix, which dropped from 6% to 4.6%, mixed-OS use which dropped from 7.2% to 6.2% and other operating systems, including BSD, Mac OS X and Windows, which were all down this year from the November 2007 list."

Microsoft is proud that a system running Windows HPC Server 2008 took 10th place... behind nine supercomputers running Linux. Even then, this was really more of a stunt than a demonstration that the HPC Server system is ready to compete with the big boys.

You see, there are no Microsoft programming tools to write supercomputer compatible applications. That will come years from now with Visual Studio 2010 and when Microsoft's F# is more than a research project language. In short, Windows HPC isn't ready for prime-time.

In the meantime, the real work is being done on the Linux computers. The number one supercomputer? Once more it's IBM's Linux-powered Roadrunner That's the same supercomputer, which this summer broke supercomputing's sound barrier: a sustained run of more than one petaflop per second or 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second. Beat that Microsoft!

The Roadrunner does have competition now though. The Cray XT Jaguar also recently busted the petaflop wall. The Cray also, of course, runs Linux. In the XT's case, it's running CNL (Compute Node Linux). CNL is based on SUSE Linux.

Needless to say, all the Linux systems do have working parallel-processing languages, like GCC, PGI and PathScale. For now, and the foreseeable future, Linux will not only stay the fastest computers, they'll also be the most useful fast computers.

Source:- blogs.computerworld.com/

PHP Zend Framework 1.7 adds Adobe support

The open source Zend Framework 1.7 is now available expanding the PHP framework to work better with Adobe Flex and AIR applications. Adobe and Zend announced back in September that they would be collaborating for Zend Framework and now they've delivered.

"Adobe and Zend have been working together to make Flex and AIR application development much easier for PHP developers," Zend co-founder Andi Gutmans blogged " This announcement marks a significant milestone in those efforts with the production release of the Zend_Amf component in ZF 1.7. Now PHP 5 developers can use the open, binary AMF3 protocol (think of it as ActionScript's native tongue) as easily as any other server-client protocol in Zend Framework."

Action Message Format (AMF) is the protocol that Flex uses to talk to the back end enabling both Flex and Flash based applications to exchange data with servers.

The Zend Framework 1.7 also includes some other neat features that PHP developers will likely benefit from. Among them is the ZendX_JQuery module which provides integration with the JQuery JavaScript toolkit. There is also support in the Zend_Search_Lucene module for indexing Office Open XML documents which could be a very useful thing too.

The 1.7 release comes just under three months after the Zend Framework 1.6 release which made Figlets into something useful for CAPTCHA (if you haven't read that story, you should). Great to see that regular progress continues to be made on this PHP framework. It's something that continues to re-inforce the fact that PHP is still a very modern and capable language for web application development.

Source:- blog.internetnews.com/

SharePoint Templates: Helpful tools in Hosted SharePoint Web Sites

Providing a starting point for the developers and the partner who look forward to build deeper solutions based on SharePoint hosting, the SharePoint Templates caters to the different business process needs in organization (irrespective of the size of the organizations). Fully compatible with the Microsoft office SharePoint designer 2007, the SharePoint Templates can actually be divided into two separate groups namely server admin templates and site admin templates. Providing out-of-the-box custom scenarios, the SharePoint Templates in SharePoint WSS 3.0 hosting can be applied in certain business tasks like sales campaign tracking or managing the helpdesk. Site admin templates are custom SharePoint Templates which can be easily installed into the template gallery by a SharePoint site administrator without requiring access to server administration. Server admin SharePoint Templates are site definitions. They enable tighter integration and increased functionality within Windows SharePoint Services platform. As against the Site admin templates their installation requires a server administrator.

The Application Templates which are out-of-the-box options and are pre-created can help you to start with your hosted SharePoint web site, or pages inside SharePoint Hosting Site. Easily applicable to the new pages, the SharePoint Templates and can be easily manipulated and changed, just like you do while building a SharePoint page from right from the scratch. The application templates also help to create web based applications which are capable of increasing the overall efficiency.

There are in total 40 SharePoint Templates created by Microsoft. These templates do not only save time but also increases the overall efficiency and also helps in the manipulation of the web parts (which are used to construct the SharePoint pages). The SharePoint templates are added or removed or can be edited according to your needs. All that you need to do is to identify your needs… You have a solution to your problem!

Source:- hostreview.com/

Moss Mini Calendar by offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com

Prerequisites
(1) We need to make sure that timer job is running from:
Administrative Tools >> Services >> Windows SharePoint Services Timer

If service is not started please start it.

(2) Check whether solution is deployed or not.
From - Central administration >> Operations >> Solutions


(3) If it is deployed then they can go ahead and activate feature manually by going to site collection
Site Actions >> Site Settings >> Modify All Site Settings >> Site Collection Features.


Working with Maven Infosoft’s MOSS Mini Calendar
There is often need to share information about important dates, appointments and meetings. The Maven Infosoft’s MOSS Mini Calendar provides all information.

When you import Maven Infosoft’s MOSS Mini Calendar on site it looks like as follows:

(Fig. 1)

When click on Modify Shared Web Part (right top corner) of Fig. 1, it looks like as follows:

( Fig. 2 )

What you see on right side of Fig. 2 are custom properties of the mini calendar.
1. About us: When click on this, it displays Maven Infosoft’s details in popup window.
2. Select a list: It contains variety of contents like documents, form and templates, master page gallery, web part gallery etc.
3. Select a display column: It contains different columns like name, title, created by, modify by related to selected list item. What you want to display on calendar please select from this list.
4. Select a view to filter calendar items: select which items to display related to calendar item.
5. Select a date column to base the calendar on: Means which items to display related to date column (e.g. created, modify).
6. Select a Background Color: It sets calendar date cells background color.
7. Select a Body Text Color: It sets calendar date cells text color.
8. Select a Border Color: It sets calendar border color. It also sets calendar’s title back color.
9. Select a Border Font Color: It sets calendar’s title fore color.
10. Select a Highlight Color: It sets color on that cells where there are some events display in popup window by moving mouse over on cell as follow -

Highlight Color

11. Select a Highlight Font Color:

Highlight Font Color

12. Select a Day Header Background Color: It sets the calendar’s day header background color.

Day Header Background color

13. Select a Day Header Fore Color: It sets the calendar’s day header font color.

Day Header Fore color

By setting all above properties, click on OK button it display as Fig.1. Now When you take mouse over the highlight cell it display popup window as follow –

Popup window

When click on any items it goes to that particular page.

Microsoft Launches Online Exchange, SharePoint

Microsoft on Monday officially launched hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint, two of its biggest on-premise cash cows, and continued to drive home the message that channel partners have nothing to fear from Microsoft's plan to move all its enterprise apps to the cloud.

Exchange Online and SharePoint Online are part of Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), which also includes Live Meeting and Office Communications Server, although the latter is still in beta and won't be available until next spring.

At a launch event in San Francisco, Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division, said companies can reap cost savings of between 10 and 50 percent by moving to Microsoft-hosted SharePoint and Exchange services.

Microsoft's launch last month of the Windows Azure cloud-based development platform marked a significant step forward for Microsoft's Software Plus Services strategy, which blends on-premise software with Microsoft-hosted apps delivered over the Web from Microsoft's data centers, Elop said.

Microsoft has already sold more that 500,000 seats of Exchange Online since making it available to enterprises last year, but has also seen "a tremendous amount of interest" in BPOS from companies of all sizes, Elop said. More than 1500 companies have signed up for the Microsoft Partner Program for Microsoft Online Services since its launch in July, he added.

In July at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference, some solution providers were upset by the commission structure for BPOS as well as by Microsoft's revelation that it would take over control of billing customers.

Exchange Online is priced at $10 per user/month, SharePoint Online per user/month is $7.25. Office Communications Server Online will be $2.50 per user/month, and LiveMeeting will be $4.50 per user/month. Microsoft will offer these services in one-year automatically renewing agreements.

At the Monday launch event, Elop insisted that Microsoft has maintained "a deliberate dependence" on its partner ecosystem by offering VARs the chance to develop recurring revenue streams.

To illustrate what Elop described as the "absolutely overwhelming" channel response to Exchange and SharePoint Online, Microsoft had several partners on hand to discuss deployment scenarios. These case studies helped underscore Microsoft's mantra that VARs can adapt their business models by focusing on value-added migration and customization services.

"The whole world is changing. It requires change, but it's representative of what's going on in the market today," said Elop.

Adam Smith, director of marketing at Phase 2 International, a Honolulu, Hawaii-based solution provider, says in the current economic environment, his customers are finding it easier to pay a monthly subscription as opposed to a major one-time capital expenditure.

Smith admits that the Microsoft's WPC announcement was initially ominous for Microsoft hosting partners, but said the practical realities of deploying on-premise Microsoft apps quickly dissolved those fears.

"We've never had a customer who was satisfied with an out-of-the-box, Microsoft application," Smith said. "Every customer, without exception, has required some level of support, training, integration, or customization."

Source:- crn.com/

The SharePoint Upgrade Trap

SharePoint 2007 migrations are simple enough, but beware of hidden dangers. Here's a look at some of the more common upgrade and migration problems.

When I think about the process of migrating from SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2007, the phrase "deceptively simple" comes to mind. Microsoft gives you the option of either performing an in-place upgrade or a migration. If you choose the in-place upgrade option, all you have to do is insert an installation disk, answer a basic question or two, click Next a few times, and you're good to go.

Simple, right? So why qualify the process as deceptively simple? Well, there's a lot that can go wrong. Let's look a bit more closely at some of the caveats to the upgrade or migration process and what you can do to avoid some common problems.

Upgrade Paths
The first thing that you need to know about the upgrade process is that not every version of SharePoint can be directly upgraded. SharePoint 2007 supports in-place upgrades from SharePoint 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

If you are running Windows SharePoint Services 2.0, then the easiest way to upgrade is to upgrade to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and then to SharePoint 2007. Microsoft offers a full upgrade toolkit that can help you to upgrade from Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 to 3.0. You can download this toolkit here.

If you happen to be running Microsoft Content Management Server 2002, then you will not be able to do an in-place upgrade, but you can migrate the server's content.

What Could Go Wrong?
So if an upgrade or migration is so easy, what could possibly go wrong? Even though Microsoft has thoroughly tested the upgrade and migration features, they have no way of knowing about any custom code that you might be running. The migration or upgrade process works really well if you are using only stock Web parts, but things become a bit sketchy when you start introducing customizations.

One classic example of this is that if you use a tool such as Microsoft FrontPage to customize a SharePoint site, that site is said to be unghosted. What this means is that when the migration completes, the site will still retain some of the look and feel of the SharePoint 2003 site, because Setup doesn't know how to convert Web parts that do not comply with some default parameters. Fortunately, Microsoft does provide administrators with a way to return a site to a ghosted status once the migration is complete.

Path of Most Resistance
As you can see, the upgrade or migration process is not always as easy as you might at first be lead to believe. That being the case, I strongly recommend performing a trial upgrade or a trial migration. That way, you can find out about any potential issues ahead of time, without affecting your production servers.

The easiest way of performing a trial upgrade or a trial migration is to get a couple of high-end PCs that you can temporarily configure as servers. Once you have these PCs in place, you can place them on an isolated network and then restore your SharePoint backups to them.

Using an isolated network is important -- you don't want your trial migration to impact your production network in any way. The down side to using an isolated network segment is that you will need to set up at least one domain controller and at least one DNS server on it.

One of the easiest ways to bring an infrastructure server onto your isolated network segment is to install a trial version of Windows Server onto a PC and then use DCPROMO to promote it to a domain controller. Once you have done that, then you can physically remove the new domain controller from your production network, and then attach it to your isolated segment. You will then need to seize the operations master roles and configure the domain controller to act as a DNS server.

Keep in mind that because you have seized the operations master roles, you won't be able to plug the domain controller back into your production network. That being the case, you will need to use the Active Directory Users and Computers console to remove the references to your new domain controller from your Active Directory.

It's a lot of work to get the SharePoint server and the domain controller in place for a trial migration or upgrade. The nice thing about using this method though, is that it allows you to get an accurate feel for how the transitioning process will go when you eventually try it on your production network.

Keep in mind that even if it appears that your trial migration or upgrade was successful, you need to have some of your power users log into your isolated network and interact with your SharePoint site in the same way that they do on the production network. Having experienced users to thoroughly test the post-migration lab network is the only way that you will be able to tell for sure whether or not there were problems with the migration process.

A Simple Plan
Unfortunately, if you have created any custom Web parts, made customizations to existing Web parts, or purchased any third party SharePoint add-ons, then there is no way of knowing exactly what is going to happen during the upgrade or migration process. That's why it is so important to thoroughly test your migration plan before you attempt to upgrade or migrate your production servers.

Source:- rcpmag.com/

SugarCRM Keeps You Closer to Your Customers

In trying economic times, it's critical to keep your business in close contact with customers, so you can capture otherwise elusive revenue opportunities. Customer relationship management (CRM) applications such as SugarCRM help ensure that your sales stay on track.

Like most CRM apps, SugarCRM tracks your contacts, appointments, and sales opportunities. On top of that, however, it offers better-than-average graphs that let you check your progress in meeting sales quotas. You can easily modify the app's terminology, as well as its look and feel, until it's just right for your business.

Though its CRM capabilities are more robust than those of Microsoft Outlook or Sage's venerable Act contact manager, it doesn't provide all the integrated financial capabilities (such as tie-ins to invoicing) that you get in an online service such as NetSuite.

I looked at the hosted version of SugarCRM, which offers accounts that are reasonably priced for a small business, starting as low as $40 per user, per month. SugarCRM is also available as packaged software--including a free open-source edition--that you can install on your own server.

Using SugarCRM

SugarCRM's flexibility is particularly sweet. You can change the look of the app, making relatively small modifications (such as a font color) or giving it a major overhaul by selecting a theme that revamps both its appearance and navigation. You can decide which components, called "dashlets," you wish to display. You can also change the names of assorted fields to customize them for your business.

The user panel is thoughtfully laid out, with tabs that direct you to a dashboard with charts, a calendar, contacts, sales opportunities, marketing campaigns, sales leads, and more.

The key component in any CRM app is the way it allows you to track customer interest in your company's goods and services. This is where SugarCRM shines, as it lets you monitor progress from the initial lead. You can track the potential sales and likelihood of a deal, with best, likely, and worst-case scenarios that you specify.

SugarCRM Integration

If you're like most businesspeople, you already track your contacts in your PC and have no desire to reenter all that information. SugarCRM can import contact data from popular programs such as Outlook, Act, and the online CRM service Salesforce.com.

Autosync with Outlook is also supported, permitting you to modify your contacts and calendar appointments in either SugarCRM or Outlook and transfer the changes to the other application.

Plug-ins for Microsoft Word and Excel (the latter currently in beta testing) let you use Word templates and Excel spreadsheets to prepare special reports and analyze data to your heart's content.

Which SugarCRM Is Best?

SugarCRM is available in both hosted and on-site options. The hosted editions are Professional On-Demand ($480 per user, per year) and Enterprise On-Demand ($900 per user, per year). Professional includes most of what a small business requires in CRM. Enterprise adds advanced capabilities such as offline client synchronization, more-sophisticated reporting, and support for the Oracle database.

On-site options that you can install on your own server (which I didn't review) include both Enterprise ($449 per user, per year) and Professional ($275 per user, per year), along with the free Community edition. All editions other than Community require a five-user minimum order.

If you're seeking more customer contact tracking capabilities than Microsoft Outlook provides, SugarCRM could deliver what you need. The no-cost Community edition lets you try it out risk-free.

Source:- pcworld.com/