That's an interesting comment. I have done exactly what you described, and found that I needed only five functions:
connect_to_db() -connects to the database and returns the connection token -also, caches the connection token, to save having to do it a second time
get_sql_array() -given a SQL SELECT statement, this returns all fields in an array
get_sql_array_of_hashes() -given a SQL SELECT statement, this returns an array of hashes, where each element in the array represents a record with a hash, where each key in the hash is the name of the field
execute_sql() -given any SQL statement, this executes it and returns a count of records affected
sql_quote() -given a string, this function escapes the string and encloses it in single quotes, appropriate for inclusion in a SQL statement or query
I only ever call the last 4, since each (except sql_quote) calls connect_to_db().
I have versions of the above 5 functions for connecting to MS SQL Server, MS Access, and MySQL in Perl, VBScript and PHP. I have little problem switching between Perl, VBScript and PHP since these (and many more) functions are available in all three.
If another database or language comes along, I can have my mini-library ported in an hour or so, since, as The DOD player noted, it is only 20 lines or so of code.
In the last year, we have been doing projects almost exclusively in PHP, and I have been considering moving to the Pear DB library. Anyone care to comment on their experience with Pear?
Generally speaking, I am surprised to see how negative Slashdotters are to new technology, especially before knowing much about how it works. The assumption always seems to be that the implementation will be completely useless, dangerous and insecure.
I may not speak for all SlashDotters, but perhaps our negative attitude comes from having seen the little man behind the curtain a few too many times. Although I am a web application developer, I still do my taxes with paper forms, and refuse to sign up for receiving bills by email instead of regular mail. I'm perfectly willing to order t-shirts and books on the web, but for the important stuff, I want to see paper documents. And there are few things more important to me than the performance of the vehicle I'm riding in.
Perhaps it is the typical SlashDotters familiarity with the concept of probability that makes us suspicious. What percentage of false-positives would be acceptable for a car that applies its own brakes?
Also, I just keep picturing some driver getting creamed by a truck while looking back, asking: "Who's pulling on my seatbelt?"
On the bright side, pay attention to the technologies that SlashDotters are excited about. Linux, Open Source, Macs, TiVOs, MySQL, PHP -- good stuff!
...so they get PHP, Perl and AppleScript as part of the default install, with free tools like Project Builder and AppleScript Studio. That would be an awesome push in the right direction!
I have a background working in radio and as a recording engineer, and recently, iTunes and AAC have convinced me to rip my entire 700 CD collection.
I was intrigued by a product from SliMP3 that hooks up to your stereo and plays music files that it reads over an ethernet network. However, I can't stand listening to MP3 files, since the quality sucks.
When Apple announced the new iTunes with support for AAC, I decided to give it a try. I ripped a few tracks at 360k, and did an A/B comparison with the original AIFF files. (A handy way to do this on a Mac is to set QuickTime Player to only play sound for foreground windows, then get two tracks running at the same time, and click back and forth between them.)
I couldn't hear any difference between the two, so I ripped the same tracks at the default 128k, and to my amazement, still couldn't hear any difference. Now, I make no claim to "golden ears", but I am definitely fussier than most, and know that if I can hear no difference with my Sennheiser headphones, then AAC at 128 bit is good enough.
I immediately embarked on a project to rip all my CDs, getting a dozen or so done each day. Last night I finished Lard, The Leaving Trains and Low Pop Suicide. Tonight, it's on to the M's, starting with Malhavoc!
By the way, I have seen nothing that can touch iTunes in terms of convenience and usability. As I rip my CDs, I take care to classify each album and rate each song. Now I can use iTunes dynamic playlists to randomly select my favourites, or just Industrial music from the 80s, or just Electronica, or whatever. Apple's iTunes is invaluable, if for no other reason than for the meta-data that it tracks, such as when a song was played or ripped. Thanks, Apple!
Part 2 of my project: sell enough of my CDs to buy an iPod or some sort of networked audio component with the proceeds. I figure I need to unload these suckers before they become as value-less as my crates of LPs.
I wonder because I started in ASP with VBScript. I learned Perl and PHP and now I do PHP pretty much full time.
I followed pretty much the same path as you, and once I tried PHP there was no turning back, especially once I discoverd the Smarty Template Engine. Everyone doing PHP development should check it out.
Re:Speaking of FUD
on
PHP Cookbook
·
· Score: 4, Informative
PHP actually is not a language. PHP is an engine for embedded scripting languages in markup documents. Zend is the scripting language that most people generalize as "PHP", but any other scripting language could also be developed and used with the PHP engine.
You have that ass-backwards. PHP is the language, Zend, the engine. Any other scripting language could be developed and used with the Zend engine.
Re:The superiority of PHP over Perl
on
PHP Cookbook
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Amen!
I did a lot of Perl development before switching to PHP, and some of the things you mention that are missing from Perl are readily available as modules from CPAN. But that just adds another point in PHP's favour -- the default install comes with all the stuff you mentioned.
Before anyone gets their Perl backs up, let me point out why a good default install is important for web development: you don't always have control over the server, so you can't always get the Perl modules you want. (But if you want to re-write your code, sometimes, you'll get what you need! (Couldn't resist.))
Re:Speaking of FUD
on
PHP Cookbook
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Since the "language of browsers" is ECMAscript it makes sense to use that on the server, too, so one doesn't have to constantly shift back and forth between languages.
That doesn't even remotely make sense. Most browsers have javascript built-in, so that should decide what language to use server-side? Personally, keeping javascript for client-side and PHP or whatever for server-side is less confusing. That contextual switch is easier when the client-side / server-side code looks different.
Now I'm off to find a review of a Javascript book, so that I can insert random comments about what a shitty little language it is. That will be quite helpful for someone who wants a book about Javascript, I'm sure.
If the US spent 5% of what it is proposed to spend on this futile SDI on altruistic aid programs they would eliminate enemies and threats much more reliably and permanently than engaging in another arms race and escalating tensions. Isolationism behind an impenetrable magic shield is just a fantasy.
No. The fantasy is thinking that sworn enemies of the U.S.A., and the West in general, can be bought. I give them more credit than that. When they say that they want to destroy us all, I believe them. Why don't you? Don't you think that enemies of the West are honourable, at least to the extent that they mean what they say?
Building SDI is a reasonable response to unreasonable, but very plausible, threats.
It may also help the company fend off competition from Apple and freely shared software.
Poor little Microsoft, trying to eke out a living on the fringes of the computer industry, threatened by the monopoly held by Apple and their free software buddies!
Seriously, though, there is something to be made of all this. Long-term, Microsoft is legitimately threatened by free software. This is why they are getting more and more into hardware, like XBox and services, like HotMail. They are moving their software away from a purchase model to a rental model.
Things could get very interesting when a critical mass of Microsoft's customer start realizing that something like MySQL is actually superior to SQL Server, and look Ma, no price tag! If we think Microsoft acts loutish now, wait until they are legitimately threatened!
1. The HUD: The game had a transparent, full-screen map over the 3D view. It rotated so that whatever direction you were facing was at the top of the screen. Since the map built itself as you progressed, you could infer things from the display, such as where you have already been. Anyone designing a real-world HUD should probably play this game to see it done right! After playing AvP, I started to wish I had the HUD in real-life.
2. One time I was playing as the Alien, and was zooming around the air ducts for hours. I immediately stopped playing and hopped in my car to pick up my girlfriend from work. As I was driving my car, I had the strangest feeling that I was still in the game somehow, and felt a slight urge to just floor it and tear all over lawns, sidewalks, etc. Perhaps there should have been a label on that game -- something about not operating heavy machinery immediately after playing!
I never "pooped in my pants" when the Predator whispered, but I was so startled once by an Alien that I dropped the joystick. The Aliens were absolutely silent, until a split second after they were visible, at which point they screamed. In a dark room with the sound cranked, it was quite effective.
The great thing about AvP on the Atari Jaguar was that there were no "levels", like in Doom, Quake, etc. Right from the start, you could take the elevator straight to the Alien or Predator ships--and get slaughtered of course, because you didn't bother to roam around and collect all the weapons you need. No other game was ever designed like that, as far as I know.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you also mean "sleeping"?
That's an interesting comment. I have done exactly what you described, and found that I needed only five functions:
connect_to_db()
-connects to the database and returns the connection token
-also, caches the connection token, to save having to do it a second time
get_sql_array()
-given a SQL SELECT statement, this returns all fields in an array
get_sql_array_of_hashes()
-given a SQL SELECT statement, this returns an array of hashes, where each element in the array represents a record with a hash, where each key in the hash is the name of the field
execute_sql()
-given any SQL statement, this executes it and returns a count of records affected
sql_quote()
-given a string, this function escapes the string and encloses it in single quotes, appropriate for inclusion in a SQL statement or query
I only ever call the last 4, since each (except sql_quote) calls connect_to_db().
I have versions of the above 5 functions for connecting to MS SQL Server, MS Access, and MySQL in Perl, VBScript and PHP. I have little problem switching between Perl, VBScript and PHP since these (and many more) functions are available in all three.
If another database or language comes along, I can have my mini-library ported in an hour or so, since, as The DOD player noted, it is only 20 lines or so of code.
In the last year, we have been doing projects almost exclusively in PHP, and I have been considering moving to the Pear DB library. Anyone care to comment on their experience with Pear?
It's actually meant for kids, but everyone at my work is hooked on Spaced Penguin.
I call those "Pace Cars." The best solution I have found is to speed up to about 50% over the speed limit, until you are well ahead of them.
Generally speaking, I am surprised to see how negative Slashdotters are to new technology, especially before knowing much about how it works. The assumption always seems to be that the implementation will be completely useless, dangerous and insecure.
I may not speak for all SlashDotters, but perhaps our negative attitude comes from having seen the little man behind the curtain a few too many times. Although I am a web application developer, I still do my taxes with paper forms, and refuse to sign up for receiving bills by email instead of regular mail. I'm perfectly willing to order t-shirts and books on the web, but for the important stuff, I want to see paper documents. And there are few things more important to me than the performance of the vehicle I'm riding in.
Perhaps it is the typical SlashDotters familiarity with the concept of probability that makes us suspicious. What percentage of false-positives would be acceptable for a car that applies its own brakes?
Also, I just keep picturing some driver getting creamed by a truck while looking back, asking: "Who's pulling on my seatbelt?"
On the bright side, pay attention to the technologies that SlashDotters are excited about. Linux, Open Source, Macs, TiVOs, MySQL, PHP -- good stuff!
After a collision, you hear a recording by the AOL guy: "You've got concussion!"
...at SCO?
Maybe if the just dubbed in the word "Mecca" whenever a character says "Zion," the Egyptian censors could un-clench their anuses.
For me, Keanu Reeves has a life-time get-out-of-jail-free card for The River's Edge.
...so they get PHP, Perl and AppleScript as part of the default install, with free tools like Project Builder and AppleScript Studio. That would be an awesome push in the right direction!
I have a background working in radio and as a recording engineer, and recently, iTunes and AAC have convinced me to rip my entire 700 CD collection.
I was intrigued by a product from SliMP3 that hooks up to your stereo and plays music files that it reads over an ethernet network. However, I can't stand listening to MP3 files, since the quality sucks.
When Apple announced the new iTunes with support for AAC, I decided to give it a try. I ripped a few tracks at 360k, and did an A/B comparison with the original AIFF files. (A handy way to do this on a Mac is to set QuickTime Player to only play sound for foreground windows, then get two tracks running at the same time, and click back and forth between them.)
I couldn't hear any difference between the two, so I ripped the same tracks at the default 128k, and to my amazement, still couldn't hear any difference. Now, I make no claim to "golden ears", but I am definitely fussier than most, and know that if I can hear no difference with my Sennheiser headphones, then AAC at 128 bit is good enough.
I immediately embarked on a project to rip all my CDs, getting a dozen or so done each day. Last night I finished Lard, The Leaving Trains and Low Pop Suicide. Tonight, it's on to the M's, starting with Malhavoc!
By the way, I have seen nothing that can touch iTunes in terms of convenience and usability. As I rip my CDs, I take care to classify each album and rate each song. Now I can use iTunes dynamic playlists to randomly select my favourites, or just Industrial music from the 80s, or just Electronica, or whatever. Apple's iTunes is invaluable, if for no other reason than for the meta-data that it tracks, such as when a song was played or ripped. Thanks, Apple!
Part 2 of my project: sell enough of my CDs to buy an iPod or some sort of networked audio component with the proceeds. I figure I need to unload these suckers before they become as value-less as my crates of LPs.
I wonder because I started in ASP with VBScript. I learned Perl and PHP and now I do PHP pretty much full time.
I followed pretty much the same path as you, and once I tried PHP there was no turning back, especially once I discoverd the Smarty Template Engine. Everyone doing PHP development should check it out.
PHP actually is not a language. PHP is an engine for embedded scripting languages in markup documents. Zend is the scripting language that most people generalize as "PHP", but any other scripting language could also be developed and used with the PHP engine.
You have that ass-backwards. PHP is the language, Zend, the engine. Any other scripting language could be developed and used with the Zend engine.
Amen!
I did a lot of Perl development before switching to PHP, and some of the things you mention that are missing from Perl are readily available as modules from CPAN. But that just adds another point in PHP's favour -- the default install comes with all the stuff you mentioned.
Before anyone gets their Perl backs up, let me point out why a good default install is important for web development: you don't always have control over the server, so you can't always get the Perl modules you want. (But if you want to re-write your code, sometimes, you'll get what you need! (Couldn't resist.))
Since the "language of browsers" is ECMAscript it makes sense to use that on the server, too, so one doesn't have to constantly shift back and forth between languages.
That doesn't even remotely make sense. Most browsers have javascript built-in, so that should decide what language to use server-side? Personally, keeping javascript for client-side and PHP or whatever for server-side is less confusing. That contextual switch is easier when the client-side / server-side code looks different.
Now I'm off to find a review of a Javascript book, so that I can insert random comments about what a shitty little language it is. That will be quite helpful for someone who wants a book about Javascript, I'm sure.
I just installed it OK on Windows NT. (When I get home, I'll install it on my 'real' computer -- my iMac G4.)
anybody who says "pop machine" is immediately stoned in the public square
If you don't have pop machines, then from where are you getting your pop?
That's exactly why the generic term should be spelled "unix".
My favourite quote from the article:
Erasing the information will prevent certain types of attacks and remind people that they're dealing with confidential material.
So the new user interface paradigm is noticing the 'absence' of visual data? This guy's been reading too much Sartre.
If the US spent 5% of what it is proposed to spend on this futile SDI on altruistic aid programs they would eliminate enemies and threats much more reliably and permanently than engaging in another arms race and escalating tensions. Isolationism behind an impenetrable magic shield is just a fantasy.
No. The fantasy is thinking that sworn enemies of the U.S.A., and the West in general, can be bought. I give them more credit than that. When they say that they want to destroy us all, I believe them. Why don't you? Don't you think that enemies of the West are honourable, at least to the extent that they mean what they say?
Building SDI is a reasonable response to unreasonable, but very plausible, threats.
Here's my favourite quote from the article:
It may also help the company fend off competition from Apple and freely shared software.
Poor little Microsoft, trying to eke out a living on the fringes of the computer industry, threatened by the monopoly held by Apple and their free software buddies!
Seriously, though, there is something to be made of all this. Long-term, Microsoft is legitimately threatened by free software. This is why they are getting more and more into hardware, like XBox and services, like HotMail. They are moving their software away from a purchase model to a rental model.
Things could get very interesting when a critical mass of Microsoft's customer start realizing that something like MySQL is actually superior to SQL Server, and look Ma, no price tag! If we think Microsoft acts loutish now, wait until they are legitimately threatened!
Two other things about AvP:
1. The HUD: The game had a transparent, full-screen map over the 3D view. It rotated so that whatever direction you were facing was at the top of the screen. Since the map built itself as you progressed, you could infer things from the display, such as where you have already been. Anyone designing a real-world HUD should probably play this game to see it done right! After playing AvP, I started to wish I had the HUD in real-life.
2. One time I was playing as the Alien, and was zooming around the air ducts for hours. I immediately stopped playing and hopped in my car to pick up my girlfriend from work. As I was driving my car, I had the strangest feeling that I was still in the game somehow, and felt a slight urge to just floor it and tear all over lawns, sidewalks, etc. Perhaps there should have been a label on that game -- something about not operating heavy machinery immediately after playing!
I never "pooped in my pants" when the Predator whispered, but I was so startled once by an Alien that I dropped the joystick. The Aliens were absolutely silent, until a split second after they were visible, at which point they screamed. In a dark room with the sound cranked, it was quite effective.
The great thing about AvP on the Atari Jaguar was that there were no "levels", like in Doom, Quake, etc. Right from the start, you could take the elevator straight to the Alien or Predator ships--and get slaughtered of course, because you didn't bother to roam around and collect all the weapons you need. No other game was ever designed like that, as far as I know.
Your wife runs Linux?
Mine needs a computer.
...PHP