MEETING MINUTES: - 
July 12th, 2003

Members attending the meeting included: Richard Foerster,  Jeff Lasman, Lisle Emerson,  Jacob Emerson, and Jerry Schnaus.   Also attending the meeting for the first time was guest, Jerry Hall.

Members not in attendance at this meeting included   Jim Lucha,  Greg Rawson,  Martin Fleming, Jim Grey, Layne Morales, Alan Shoemaker, Don Evinger,  Mac Shaver, Klaus Herzog,  Isaac Sladana,  Ossil Macavinta, Michael Karshner, Dana Rodin, Todd Lyons, Dave Reisz, Gary Taylor, Ken Howels,  Hung Nguyen, Kandy Phan, Tad Peters,  Forrest Sherman,  Tom Nielsen, Dick Mathews, Clint Byrum,  Craig Carignan, Donna Schrokosch, and  Jim Vassilako.   

Richard Foerster made a presentation to the group on using the Zend Encoder {zend.org} to protect, and secure applications developed using PHP and mySQL.  He also provided a packet of information that included an example of a program encoded by Zend.  He explained that The Zend engine has been part of PHP since version 4.0.5.  To run encoded pages at a site, the Zend Optimizer must be installed.   The encoder which is part of the ZendSafeGuardSuite has a GTK {gtk.org} based GUI.  but it can also be run separately from the command line.

Richard explained you could download time-limited versions of any Zend product to see if it works for you.  Installation of the encoder and optimizer was easy and trouble free.  Two pleasant surprises were: 1) absolutely no re-work was required to get an existing application to run after being encoded.  2) The encoded pages load and run faster, thanks to optimizing techniques used during encoding.

Many members are aware that PHP-5 is now available as a beta.  This new version features Zend Engine 2.  You can find out about the major changes by visiting:  http://www.php.net/zend-engine-2.php.   Additionally, XML support has been completely redone in PHP 5; all extensions are now focused around the excellent libxml2 library (http://www.xmlsoft.org/).  Another change is in the addition of SQLite, which will be bundled with PHP 5.   To learn more about SQLite check out:  http://www.hwaci.com/sw/sqlite/    A final area of improvement in the new PHP 5 is related to streams, which now include the ability to access low-level socket operations.   

Lisle brought a number of books that she is using for her work with PHP, and gave the group a chance to see leaf through them to see how the material was presented.  Jeff recommended a book that he has found helpful: Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache in 24 Hours by author Julie C. Meloni { ISBN: 067232489X }  which is available on-line for about $20 at:  http://www.bn.com 

 All in all the meeting was a great success, and we are looking forward to our next meeting on  Aug 9th, 2003.