Shanaka's World

I Support

2011-09-26T01:34:00.000-07:00

Small Miracle

2009-07-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

Post & Win

2009-07-06T05:37:00.000-07:00

www.infotecpedia.com has organized a competition. If you prove that you are talented in Information technology and capable of writing articles then you can win $100 every month. This competition brings your knowledge forward and identifies your key skills in IT.

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Free Willy

2009-06-29T10:36:00.001-07:00

MJ

2009-06-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

This is our Sri Lanka

2009-05-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

We have to work together to make our mother land to be proud.
This is the grate grate example for that

Our Hero ..................

2009-05-17T00:49:00.000-07:00

Battle of Golds

2009-03-17T23:45:00.000-07:00

"Battle of GOLDS"

2009-03-10T23:24:00.000-07:00

DS vs MAHANAMA Big Match 26th (Thu.) & 27th (Fri.) March 2009 One Day Game 29th (Sun.) March 2009 @ SSC Grounds Guys Be There!!!

Pakistan hunts for cricket attack gunmen -- CNN Call with Sanga

2009-03-04T09:25:00.000-08:00

Tribute to a Hero

2009-01-30T00:35:00.000-08:00

How does Satellite Television work?

2008-12-25T17:39:00.000-08:00

Satellite TV works by broadcasting video and audio signals from geostationary satellites to satellite dishes on the Earth's surface.

These geostationary satellites orbit the earth in a region of space known as the Clarke Belt, which is approximately 22,300 miles above the equator.

Each of these satellites carries a number of transponders. These transponders each carry a signal back to the Earth.

These signals are typically on C Band, Ku Band, or Ka Band. The band of a signal describes, in broad terms, the frequency of the signal.

After travelling over twenty thousand miles, these signals are received by a satellite dish. This dish can be as small as 18" across, or it can be 9' or larger across. The purpose of the dish is to act as a collector and a reflector. The dish collects the signal and reflects it towards the feedhorn.

The feedhorn receives the reflected signal and sends it to the LNB. The LNB amplifies the signal and converts it to a frequency more suitable for transmission over a cable. In satellite terminology, that cable is known as the IFL.

The LNB transmits the signal over the IFL to the satellite receiver. The satellite receiver then sends the signal to your television set.
Digital Satellite TV

Most satellite TV is now encoded digitally. This enables satellite broadcasters to offer more television channels using the same amount of satellite bandwidth.

Satellite TV is available in both standard resolution and in the new ATSC High Definition (HDTV) format.

The digital data is usually compressed with MPEG-2 or a variation thereof. MPEG-4 is beginning to replace MPEG-2 in some satellite networks.
Satellite TV Options

Dozens of vendors operate satellite television networks across the globe. Your options for satellite TV will differ depending upon what country you live in. In addition, some spot beam services only serve specific large cities.

In the United States, the largest satellite TV vendors are Dish Network and DirecTV. Both DirecTV and Dish Network offer programming on the Ku and Ka bands.

In addition, National Programming Service and Superstar offer programming on C Band.

Some free-to-air satellite TV channels are even available at no cost if you have a Free-to-Air receiver.

Our Heros

2008-11-18T22:40:00.000-08:00

Drink Water on Empty Stomach

2008-09-12T04:43:00.000-07:00

It is popular in Japan today to drink water immediately after waking up every morning. Furthermore, scientific tests have proven its value. We publish below a description of use of water for our readers. For old and serious diseases as well as modern illnesses the water treatment had been found successful by a Japanese medical society as a 100% cure for the following diseases:

Headache, body ache, heart system, arthritis, fast heart beat, epilepsy, excess fatness, bronchitis asthma, TB, meningtitis, kidney and urine diseases, vomiting, gastritis, diarrhoea, piles, diabetes, constipation, all eye diseases, womb, cancer and menstrual disorders, ear nose and throat diseases.

Method of Treatment

1. As you wake up in the morning before brushing teeth, drink 4 x 160ml glasses of water.
2. Brush and clean the mouth but do not eat or drink anything for 45 minutes.
3. After 45 minutes you may eat and drink as normal.
4. After 15 minutes of breakfast, lunch and dinner do not eat or drink anything for 2 hours.
5. Those who are old or sick and are unable to drink 4 glasses of water at the beginning may commence by taking little water and gradually increase it to 4 glasses per day.
6. The above method of treatment will cure diseases of the sick and others can enjoy a healthy life.

The following list gives the number of days of treatment required to cure main deseases:

1. High Blood Pressure - 30 days
2. Gastric - 10 days
3. Diabetes - 30 days
4. Constipation - 10 days
5. Cancer - 180 days
6. TB - 90 days

Arthritis patients should follow the above treatment for only 3 days. In the 1st week to be followed by daily treatment. This treatment method has no side effects, however at the commencement of treatment you may have to urinate a few times.

Have You Seen Right Handed Sanga...?

2008-09-04T22:07:00.000-07:00

SL vs INDIA (What do you think)

2008-08-25T00:28:00.000-07:00

Agile software development and the fall of bureaucrats

2008-05-12T20:42:00.000-07:00

If you ask from a software professional about software development techniques they will tell you about the waterfall method, the object-oriented software process or the Rational Unified Process. They even will go on to explain about the pros and cons of each method. But little many of them know that there is a new and promising software development technique picking up momentum and ONLY A FEW popularity in the IT industry that will radically change the way software development is done. The technique is known as agile.

The IT industry is currently passing a significant phase, a move from prescriptive development techniques to agile techniques. Until recently management often complains that development did not want to follow a process, not understanding what was wrong with thousands of pages of procedures they expected everyone to follow. Then came agile software processes such as extreme programming (XP), feature-driven development, and agile modeling; and developers embraced them. Unfortunately management is not willing to use agile techniques and fight against their being adopted.

The only reason for this is that with agile all heavy management processes will be thrown away and everyone will have to get involved in development. Many managers have not got involved in software development for several years and are out of touch with he latest technology. Further these managers know that they will loose their bureaucratic management style which they enforce over their subordinates and will have to get back to hardcore software development. This is a truly ironic situation where developers are now demanding to follow proven software processes but yet are not being allowed to do so. This problem is evident even in Sri Lanka’s IT industry. But the hope is not totally lost. There are several new software companies that have successfully adopted agile techniques and it is gaining speed among other Sri Lankan software professionals.

Over the years software industry has used many prescriptive processes in software development. They include but not limited to waterfall life cycle characterizes by the ISO 12207 standard, the Object-Oriented Software Process (OOSP) and the Rational Unified Process (RUP). Firstly, over the time all these process recorded a significant failure rate within the industry, indicating that prescriptive processes simply are not fulfilling their promises. Secondly, many developers do not want to adopt prescriptive processes and will find ways to undermine any efforts to adopt them, either consciously or unconsciously. Thirdly, the “big design up front” (BDUF) approaches to software development are highly risky since they do not support change. Fourthly, most prescriptive processes promote activities only slightly related to the actual development of software . In short the bureaucrats have taken over.

To address these challenges the Agile Software Development Alliance was formed by a group of 17 methodologists. This alliance is often known as Agile Alliance. The conclusion of this alliance is that so succeed in a software development you need to focus o people-oriented issues and follow development techniques that readily support change. They went on to write a manifesto defining four values for encouraging better ways of developing software:

1. Individuals and interactions over process and tools

The most important factors that you need to consider are the people and how they work together because if you do not get that right the best tools and processes will not be of any use. Agile will nurture a group of people who will take collective responsibility for their work. Collectively they will help each other to deliver software on time.

2. Working software over comprehensive documentation.

The primary goal of software development is to create software, not documents. Therefore we should concentrate on developing good working software rather than developing lengthy documents. Documentation too has its place; written properly and concisely it is a valuable guide for people’s understanding. Often it is a common practice to develop software specifications and design documents before the start of development which sometimes drag onto several months. These documents become outdated when the actual development gets underway and the customer changes are not reflected. Instead of such documents it is more practical to design and deliver small parts of the software in short time spans. Prototyping, especially paper prototyping, is a good technique over specifications to capture customer requirements quickly and accurately.

3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.

Only your customer can tell you what they want. They probably do not know how to explain it to you precisely. Ii is unlikely that they get it right at first and they will likely change their minds. Having a contract with your customer is important but it’s not a substitute for communication. Fix prices are broken promises. Agile advocate not to negotiate fix prices on software contracts. It is better to estimate on hourly basic and cost per hour. If the customer insists on a fix price, then select the most critical and well defined set of functions for the first release. You can carryout extensive prototype session to reduce the risk of change. Again paper prototyping is a very economical option for it.

4. Responding to change over following a plan.

Change is a reality of software development, a reality that your software process must reflect. People change their priorities for a variety of reasons, their understanding of the problem domain changes as they see your work, and the business environment changes, as does technology. Although you need a project plan, it must be changeable and it can be very simple.

A good way to think about the manifesto is that it defines preferences, not alternatives, encouraging a focus on certain areas but not eliminating others. There are a number of agile software development methods, such as those promoted by the Agile Alliance. Most agile methods attempt to minimize risk by developing software in short time boxes, called iterations, which typically last on to four weeks. Each iteration is similar to a miniature software project of its own. An agile software project intends to be capable of releasing new software at the end of each iteration. The team reevaluates project priorities after an iteration is complete.

Adopting an agile technique does not happen overnight. It has to be planned and implemented gradually. Agile methodology advocates to discarding all bureaucratic processes that do not add value or quality to the software. Therefore it is important that you adopt industry proven methodologies and best practices for sustainability.

Extreme Programming (XP) is a good software engineering methodology that can be used in an agile environment. With XP you reduce the feedback loop through pair programming as well as by working closely with your customers. One benefit of working closely with stakeholders is that they are available to explain their requirements to you, increasing the chance that you do not mis-reducing the risk of misunderstanding them, and you can show them your work to get feedback from them, which enables you to quickly determine whether you have built the right thing or not. The cost of change is also reduced by an explicit focus on writing high-quality code and good code refactoring.

Test Driven Development (TDD) is a programming technique that will benefit agile development. TDD involves writing extensive test cases for very code piece in the software. TDD is also known as Test First Development (TFD). With TDD you will first write a test case for your software code and then implement only the code necessary to pass the test. TDD requires that an automated unit test is written before each aspect of

the code. Running the tests gives rapid confirmation of correct behaviors as the code evolves. This will allow to absorb more changes accurately and to deliver working software to the clients. Testing frameworks such as JUnit, NUnit, PHPUnit and CPPUnit are some software that allow automated test cases.

Use of a source management tools is also a necessity for agile. With agile you will be releasing working code very often. Therefore it is important that the source code has proper version control and release labels. Because changes happen more frequently, such tools will facilitate reverting back to a working version if a new change breaks the code.

Continuous build process is a process to perform an automated continuous build of any software development process. Every time a developer checks in a change, a tool checks out all the sources, builds everything, runs all the unit tests and reports back with immediate feedback. A continuous build framework can be configured into your source management tool to integrate new code changes. Such a process will notify any code breaks early to the team. Ideally the build should be done at least every day.

Use of an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) will reduce development and testing time immensely. Many plug-ins are available for the IDEs to integrate unit testing software, to link source management tools, to deploy to different web/application servers, to run the software from the IDE and even to document. This has enabled the project teams to use a single tool to carry out everything they want to code, unit test, deploy and smoke test, check into the source management and to generate documentation.

Conversion from prescriptive development techniques to agile techniques is not easy. There exist many challenges with changing peoples’ thinking.

In short agile techniques enable speedy delivery of software with effective and efficient methods and thereby reducing the cost of development. But in order to achieve its full potential team members have to be honest in what they do, taking individual responsibility for their work, work as a team with the notion of “us” rather than “I” and help each other during problematic situations.

Nurturing an agile mind among all team members is not easy. In the Sri Lankan context there could be cultural reasons and long standing organizational and individual practices that may block the adoption. But if we can surmount these barriers and use agile in our software development, the benefits that will accrue our IT industry is immense.

Definition For Agile

Agile Org

Prison Break: Season 4 Filming Rumors

2008-03-04T02:13:00.000-08:00

Good news for Prison Break fans! Last week, BuddyTV wrote about the possibility of the show returning for a fourth season. The story received an overwhelming number of responses in favor of bringing the show back to find out what happens to Michael outside the walls of Sona and Sucre trapped inside as a prisoner. 95% of the readers voted in our poll that they need a fourth season. They got their wish when TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello reported last week that it seemed certain the show was coming back. More details about the fourth season emerged today surrounding the show’s upcoming shooting location.

Despite any official word of a fourth season, Prison Break is looking to move from its home in North Texas to Los Angeles to film. "The producers have an exciting idea for next season's storylines, and unfortunately, it may require moving the series back to Los Angeles for creative reasons," said Chris Alexander, a spokesperson for 20th Century Fox Television.

f the state of Texas has anything to say about it, Prison Break won’t be going anywhere. The show brought in an estimated $122.5 million to the economy in the Dallas area and a total of 35 episodes have been filmed there. "We haven't given up on it," said Janis Burkland, head of the Dallas Film Comission. "I've been calling producers and asking what can we do, if anything, to keep this here."

Next season will surely focus more on life outside of Sona than in. Michael and Lincoln have parted ways. Michael heads out in search of The Company, and Susan, to make them pay for killing Sara. Lincoln looks to disappear with LJ, the son he has been estranged from for so long. Mahone is also free, so to speak, and has now teamed with The Company. We’ve still got Bellick, T-Bag, and Sucre in Sona but that may not be enough storyline to keep the show rooted in Texas.

Troops advancing further; 69 terrorists killed, 28 injured in weekend's clashes

2008-03-03T22:38:00.000-08:00

Troops advancing further; 69 terrorists killed, 28 injured in weekend's clashes

The military reports received from the battlefronts in the North indicates that Sri Lanka security forces are moving towards LTTE territory further inflicting damages to the enemy in their military operation launched to liberate Wanni region from terrorists' hold. According to the report, 69 terrorists were killed and 28 others injured during the clashes erupted in last weekend (March 1st and 2nd). Another 31 terrorists were either killed or wounded, according to the reports.

Meanwhile, 9 army personnel have made their supreme sacrifice in the battle field while 37 others received injuries in clashes erupted in Jaffna and Wanni theaters of battle, the reports further stated.

In Jaffna theatre of battle, during the last weekend, clashes occurred in Muhamalai, Nagarkovil and Kilaly fronts and 9 terrorists were killed while 4 received injuries. As it is reported, 3 more terrorists were either killed or wounded. Damages to the own troops are concerned, 2 soldiers were killed while 8 others received injuries.

In Wanni theatre of battle, on Vavuniya front, incidents are reported in general areas Navatkulam, Periyapantrichurichchan, Koilmoddai, Sulainamurutamadu, Kurisuddakulam, Kallikkulam, Mullikulam, Villattikulam and Varikutturuwa during last weekend. 39 terrorists were killed while 15 injured due to the clashes erupted, the reports said. 3 army soldiers were killed while another 6 received injuries due to the clashes erupted in Vavuniya front during last weekend.

On Mannar front, on last Saturday (March 1) clashes erupted in general areas Karukkakulam, Mallikaittidal, and Sirikulam. 7 terrorists were killed and 6 others wounded in Saturday's clashes. Further, on the same day, troops engaged in clearing operation in general area Sirikulam unearthed 138 anti-personnel mines and 14 Improvised Explosive Devices (IED). An army soldier received injuries due to the fighting on Saturday, the repots stated.

Meanwhile, 5 more terrorists were killed in fighting took place on Mannar front last Sunday, March 2. The clashes were reported from the Karampaikkulam, Perankamam and Puliyankulam areas. Meanwhile, on the same day, troops found 209 anti-personnel mines, 7 Improvised Explosive Devices and 3 booby traps from general area Sirikulam and Malikaittidal. These items had been buried inside a terror bunker by the terrorists when they fled the area due to the face of heavy offensive attack. 3 army soldiers also sustained injuries, reports stated.

On the Welioya front, a terrorist was killed while another 13 were killed or wounded during the Saturday's clashes erupted in Mankindamalai, Kokkuthuduvai, Andankulam, Janakapura, Ethawetunuwewa and Pulmudai areas. Meanwhile, troops engaged in mine-clearing operations unearthed 437 anti-personnel mines and 2 trapped 81mm bombs from the general area Andankulam and Janakapura. Damages to the own troops are concerned, 2 soldiers were killed while another 3 received injuries due to Saturday's clashes.

Eight terrorists were killed and 3 others received injuries in fighting occurred between terrorist and security forces in Janakapura, Kokkuthuduwai and Andankulam areas in Welioya front on last Sunday. Security forces believed that at least 15 other terrorists were either killed or wounded during these clashes. According to the reports, two army soldiers were killed while 16 others sustained injuries.

2008 Cayenne GTS starts at $69,300

2008-02-28T21:58:00.000-08:00

At the Chicago Auto Show this morning, Porsche announced the sport-tuned Cayenne GTS will start at $69,300. It wasn't immediately clear if that price includes Porsche's $895 destination charge.

The price represents a premium of some $11,000 over the Cayenne S, but the GTS comes standard with 21-inch wheels, Porsche's high-tech PASM suspension and the requisite bumper and side sill extensions. Add those options to the Cayenne S, and its price comes within spitting distance of the GTS.

Porsche marketing head David Pryor called the GTS "the best-handling SUV in the world" — a bold claim, but the SUV's 405-hp V-8, derived from the engine in the Cayenne S, will move it from zero to 60 mph in less than six seconds. And Porsche says it's the first V-8 SUV in America to be offered with a six-speed manual transmission — something even the mighty Cayenne Turbo doesn't do. (All the same, we suspect most GTS buyers will get the optional six-speed Tiptronic auto.)

The Cayenne GTS hits dealerships as you read this. Considering the SUV makes up a third of Porsche's North American sales, it shouldn't be too hard to find one.

Creating an AJAX-Enabled Calendar Control

2008-02-25T21:16:00.000-08:00

Introduction
Go to any travel or event booking website and you'll find the same user interface for collecting date information: the Calendar. Providing such an interface in an ASP.NET application is a breeze, thanks to the built-in Calendar Web control. There are two downsides to ASP.NET's Calendar control: first, it is not very useful when selecting dates far into the future or past, as you can only navigate to the next or previous month; and, second, the Calendar does not use AJAX techniques, so each click, be it selecting a date or moving to the next or previous month, requires a full postback.

Mehmet Genc addressed this first shortcoming in Extending the Calendar Control's Date Navigation by showing how to add month and year drop-down lists. But Mehmet's article was written in 2004 and since then AJAX-enabled websites have become all the rage. I decided it was high time to update Mehmet's custom Calendar control to support AJAX. Specifically, I implemented the AJAX-enabled Calendar control as a User Control. The User Control renders a TextBox control that, when clicked, displays a Calendar control from which the user can select the date. Like with Mehmet's Calendar, users can quickly jump to a particular month or year by using two drop-down lists. And best of all, the user experience is very responsive.

First Things First: Ensuring Your Environment Supports ASP.NET AJAX
To use this AJAX-enabled Calendar control, make sure your development environment supports the ASP.NET AJAX framework. If you are using Visual Studio 2008, then this framework is already present. If, however, you are using Visual Studio 2005, then you need to download and install the ASP.NET AJAX framework from Microsoft's site, http://www.asp.net/ajax/. For more information on this process, refer to Scott Mitchell's article, AJAX Basics and Getting Started with Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX Framework.

My AJAX-enabled Calendar control uses the UpdatePanel and PopupControlExtender controls. While the UpdatePanel is part of the framework's "Essential Components," the PopupControlExtender is part of the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, which is a separate download (even for Visual Studio 2008). If you check out the Control Toolkit samples you'll notice that there's an AJAX Calendar control in the Toolkit. I built my own AJAX-enabled Calendar control instead of using the one in the Control Toolkit because I wanted to add the month/year drop-down lists. Also, there have been a variety of display bugs with the Calendar control (see the AJAX Control Toolkit work item list). I invite you to try out mine and the AJAX Control Toolkit's Calendar and use the one that's best suited for your needs.

Getting Started with My AJAX-Enabled Calendar Control
The complete code for this User Control, along with a sample web page, is available at the end of this article. You should be able to open the folder as a website in either Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Studio 2008.

The Calendar is implemented in the CoolCalendar.ascx file as a User Control. Take a moment to examine the markup in this page. You'll find the following key controls:

The DateTextFrom TextBox
A RequiredFieldValidator named DateTextFromRequired
A Panel control
An UpdatePanel control
The month and year DropDownList controls
The Calendar control
An AJAX PopupControlExtender control
There are a few of these controls that warrant further discussion. Take note of the markup for the DateTextFrom TextBox control (item 1):

Note the onfocus="javascript:this.blur();". This bit of client-side script ensures that whenever the user clicks on the DateTextFrom TextBox, focus is immediately taken away from the control. The idea here - as we'll see shortly - is that whenever the user focuses on the TextBox it is immediately taken away and the Calendar control is displayed. This forces the user to select a date from the calendar. If you remove the onfocus script, the user could enter the date into the TextBox via the keyboard. I find this option undesirable due to the possibility of user entry errors.

The RequiredFieldValidator (item 2) is used to optionally ensure that a date value has been supplied. The User Control contains a Boolean public property named DateTextRequired. Setting this value to True enables the RequiredFieldValidator; setting it to False disables it. By default, the RequiredFieldValidator is enabled.

The AJAX PopupControlExtender control pops up a particular Panel on the page in response to a certain client-side action. The Panel control (item 3) defines the region that is popped up, and includes the UpdatePanel (item 4), the month/year DropDownLists (item 5), and the Calendar control (item 6).

The final piece in the markup page is the PopupControlExtender control (item 7) and is configured to display the Panel (item 3) whenever the DateTextFrom TextBox receives focus. This behavior is dictated entirely through the PopupControlExtender control's properties, there's no need to write any JavaScript or code!

TargetControlID="DateTextFrom"
PopupControlID="Panel1"
Position="Bottom" />

For more information on the PopupControlExtender see the PopupControlExtender Demonstration. Also check out Brian Smith's article, Displaying Extended Details in a GridView Using an Ajax Pop-Up.

Examining the AJAX-Enabled Calendar Control's Code
The User Control's code-behind class defines a couple of properties and includes the code to populate the month/year DropDownLists and the user's interactions with the Calendar. The most important property is the DateTextFromValue, which sets or gets the selected date. This property simply reads and writes its value to the DateTextFrom TextBox.

public string DateTextFromValue
{
get { return DateTextFrom.Text; }
set { DateTextFrom.Text = value; }
}

Note: The code available for download at the end of this article includes a VB and C# version of the User Control...

Two additional properties are defined for specifying whether the RequiredFieldValidator should be enabled (DateTextRequired) and the error message to display if the required date value is not supplied (DateTextRequiredText).

The month and year DropDownLists are populated by the Populate_MonthList and Populate_YearList methods, which are called on the first page visit. These methods were taken directly from Mehmet's article. Populate_MonthList returns a list of month names (January, February, ...) while Populate_YearList populates the DropDownList with years from 20 years ago to one year in the future.

When the month or year DropDownList is changed, a partial page postback occurs and the Set_Calendar method is executed. The Set_Calendar method sets the Calendar control's TodaysDate property to the first of the selected month/year.

public void Set_Calendar(object Sender, EventArgs E)
{
string theDate = drpCalMonth.SelectedItem.Value + " 1, " + drpCalYear.SelectedItem.Value;

DateTime dtFoo;
dtFoo = System.Convert.ToDateTime(theDate);

Calendar1.TodaysDate = dtFoo;
}

Whenever the user selects a date within the Calendar, a partial page postback transpires and the Calendar's SelectionChanged event is fired. The Calendar1_SelectionChanged event handler calls the PopupControlExtender control's Commit method, passing in the Calendar's SelectedDate property. The net effect is that the Calendar popup disappears and the selected date is display in the TextBox.

protected void Calendar1_SelectionChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
PopupControlExtender1.Commit(Calendar1.SelectedDate.ToShortDateString());
}

My AJAX-Enabled Calendar Web Control In Action
The download at the end of this article includes a simple demo page, TestCoolCalendar.aspx. The demo illustrates how to use the User Control's DateTextRequired and DateTextRequiredText properties to require a date and show a custom error message. In addition to the User Control, the TestCoolCalendar.aspx includes a Save button that, when clicked, displays the value selected from the Calendar control. This value is retrieved via the User Control's DateTextFromValue property.

Conclusion
In this article we saw how to use the ASP.NET AJAX framework's UpdatePanel and the AJAX Control Toolkit's PopupControlExtender to turn the built-in Calendar control into a richer, AJAX-enabled version. This control is implemented as a User Control, making it a cinch to add to your projects. If you have any questions or comments, you can contact me at ssmith@prairieheart.com. Thanks again to Mehmet Genc for the initial inspiration and to Scott Mitchell for publishing this article.

Happy Programming!

2007-07-01T03:08:00.000-07:00

What can PHP do?

Anything. PHP is mainly focused on server-side scripting, so you can do anything any other CGI program can do, such as collect form data, generate dynamic page content, or send and receive cookies. But PHP can do much more.
There are three main areas where PHP scripts are used.
Server-side scripting. This is the most traditional and main target field for PHP. You need three things to make this work. The PHP parser (CGI or server module), a web server and a web browser. You need to run the web server, with a connected PHP installation. You can access the PHP program output with a web browser, viewing the PHP page through the server. All these can run on your home machine if you are just experimenting with PHP programming. See the installation instructions section for more information.
Command line scripting. You can make a PHP script to run it without any server or browser. You only need the PHP parser to use it this way. This type of usage is ideal for scripts regularly executed using cron (on *nix or Linux) or Task Scheduler (on Windows). These scripts can also be used for simple text processing tasks. See the section about Command line usage of PHP for more information.
Writing desktop applications. PHP is probably not the very best language to create a desktop application with a graphical user interface, but if you know PHP very well, and would like to use some advanced PHP features in your client-side applications you can also use PHP-GTK to write such programs. You also have the ability to write cross-platform applications this way. PHP-GTK is an extension to PHP, not available in the main distribution. If you are interested in PHP-GTK, visit » its own website.
PHP can be used on all major operating systems, including Linux, many Unix variants (including HP-UX, Solaris and OpenBSD), Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, RISC OS, and probably others. PHP has also support for most of the web servers today. This includes Apache, Microsoft Internet Information Server, Personal Web Server, Netscape and iPlanet servers, Oreilly Website Pro server, Caudium, Xitami, OmniHTTPd, and many others. For the majority of the servers PHP has a module, for the others supporting the CGI standard, PHP can work as a CGI processor.
So with PHP, you have the freedom of choosing an operating system and a web server. Furthermore, you also have the choice of using procedural programming or object oriented programming, or a mixture of them. Although not every standard OOP feature is implemented in PHP 4, many code libraries and large applications (including the PEAR library) are written only using OOP code. PHP 5 fixes the OOP related weaknesses of PHP 4, and introduces a complete object model.
With PHP you are not limited to output HTML. PHP's abilities includes outputting images, PDF files and even Flash movies (using libswf and Ming) generated on the fly. You can also output easily any text, such as XHTML and any other XML file. PHP can autogenerate these files, and save them in the file system, instead of printing it out, forming a server-side cache for your dynamic content.
One of the strongest and most significant features in PHP is its support for a wide range of databases. Writing a database-enabled web page is incredibly simple. The following databases are currently supported:
Adabas D
InterBase
PostgreSQL
dBase
FrontBase
SQLite
Empress
mSQL
Solid
FilePro (read-only)
Direct MS-SQL
Sybase
Hyperwave
MySQL
Velocis
IBM DB2
ODBC
Unix dbm
Informix
Oracle (OCI7 and OCI8)

Ingres
Ovrimos
We also have a database abstraction extension (named PDO) allowing you to transparently use any database supported by that extension. Additionally PHP supports ODBC, the Open Database Connection standard, so you can connect to any other database supporting this world standard.
PHP also has support for talking to other services using protocols such as LDAP, IMAP, SNMP, NNTP, POP3, HTTP, COM (on Windows) and countless others. You can also open raw network sockets and interact using any other protocol. PHP has support for the WDDX complex data exchange between virtually all Web programming languages. Talking about interconnection, PHP has support for instantiation of Java objects and using them transparently as PHP objects. You can also use our CORBA extension to access remote objects.
PHP has extremely useful text processing features, from the POSIX Extended or Perl regular expressions to parsing XML documents. For parsing and accessing XML documents, PHP 4 supports the SAX and DOM standards, and you can also use the XSLT extension to transform XML documents. PHP 5 standardizes all the XML extensions on the solid base of libxml2 and extends the feature set adding SimpleXML and XMLReader support.
At last but not least, we have many other interesting extensions, the mnoGoSearch search engine functions, the IRC Gateway functions, many compression utilities (gzip, bz2, zip), calendar conversion, translation...
As you can see this page is not enough to list all the features and benefits PHP can offer. Read on in the sections about installing PHP, and see the function reference part for explanation of the extensions mentioned here.