Integration of Frameworks For Rapid Web Development

Integration of Frameworks for Rapid
Web Development
Markus Popp & Duleepa “Dups” Wijayawardhana

MySQL Web Team
Download the presentation here

http://www.db4free.net/mysqluc2008/frameworks.odp
http://www.dups.ca/mysqluc2008/frameworks.odp
Copyright 2008 MySQL The World’s Most Popular Open Source Database 1
Introduction
• The goal of this presentation:

– give ideas on how to extend PHP/MySQL Web Sites
– ideas for different development practices
– ideas to produce more complex sites and applications faster
– integrating with different technologies including providing a better
user experience without you having to recreate the wheel every time.
• We'll examine a real-world case study in deploying a frameworks-

based architecture on a high capacity, highly available
PHP/MySQL web application:
– The MySQL Web Site
• Judge for yourself: A sample application

– Constellation Phoenix
A brief introduction to Frameworks
(and what we mean by that term)
● If a web site was a house that we were building then you
could describe it thus:
● The foundation is the server and operating system. LAMP is
our foundation
● The underlying code forms the plumbing, the wooden frame,
the electrical wiring and so on.
● The paint and the decoration is the site and the CSS
● The people who come to visit and live in it are our users.
● We want to make the house building easier. Remember

though: every house is different :)
Frameworks...
• Any code/platform which you can ease and automate
the building of an application. New Google App Engine
is a framework/platform built on a framework :)
• A framework can be for any language that you choose

to use on your website: PHP, Java, Javascript/AJAX,
HTML, XML, Python, Ruby, Flex.
• While LAMP still holds true, the future of the web is

about a LAMP stack with added “furniture” from many
different sources that truly create a beautiful place to
come visit.
Frameworks: The Good and The Bad
• Easy to deploy, better • Potentially less efficient
documentation • Bugs in code of the
• Core development is framework can affect you
elsewhere • The “ARRGH-why-does-it-
• Contribute to the maturing think-I-am-stupid” scenario
of the Framework – Frameworks can be the
independently Idiot's Guides to
• Rapid Development: no programming
need to reinvent yourself • The need for work-arounds
every time for specific use-cases
• Good business sense: (more screaming and
protection from core thumping of screens)
developers leaving
Case Study: The MySQL Story
● 200,000+ Visits/Day with 60,000 downloads and
climbing
● Highly ranked on Alexa.
● Typical LAMP stack with load balanced servers, dbs

etc.
● The site has grown organically over a decade with

various developers coming in and out.
● We are now 5 developers situated in Australia,

Austria, Russia, Canada and the USA
The Problem
• Organically grown PHP site
• Little documentation
• Little maintenance on the core infrastructure
• Spending a lot of time on manual processes instead of
development.
• Difficult for a dispersed team to introduce new
members
• So much old code that upgrades to even things at the
MySQL/PHP level were frightening things :)
• Site and processes seemed slow but no metrics to
support it.
• Too much knowledge centred on one or two
individuals which increased the “bus factor”
The Solution?
• Establish the Zend Framework as the PHP Framework
for the site combined with existing Smarty and officially
adopt YUI as one of the Javascript Frameworks.
• Why ZF?
– Zend is a MySQL/Sun Partner
– Allows us to break it apart and intermingle with our current site
– Much easier to hack to get our current content functioning so
we could move on to improve
– Favourable initial profile through xdebug and kcachegrind
– Well documented
– Strong community
– Possible move to MVC if we required.
• Oh yeah, and we started to clean up all our code. Mind
boggling task...
Xdebug Profile: MySQL Before
• Profile of the site using code before the reorganization
and use of the Zend Framework
Xdebug Profile: MySQL After
• Final xdebug profile showed that Zend Framework plus
our site content was about 1.7 - 2 times faster in
processing
A note about performance tuning
• Profiling is important: Only so much you can do
though!
• Look to your end-users for true performance tuning
• Examine other reasons for performance degradation:
– Bad memory
– Disk I/O
– Caching
– MySQL Performance
• Things like Yslow can give you some good and
interesting tips:
http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/
Sample Application:
Constellation Phoenix
• Time for an application built from the ground up:
– http://phoenix.db4free.net
• Remember there are many coding/architecture

philosophies, we are not advocating one over the
other, in the old PERL motto: TMTOWTDI – There's
More Than One Way To Do It – Tim Toady!
Prototyping with a Framework
Creating a site with a Framework-based platform gives
us a very quick prototyping tool for very advanced web
sites... here's what it all gives us:
• Zend (for PHP) • YUI (for AJAX)
– Session Management – Build new interfaces
– Authentication – Create quick AJAX
– REST Server applications
– Access Control Lists • Smarty (for HTML)
– Different types of – Defines Views
architectures (do you want – Move the presentation
MVC?) around without affecting
– Forms the code
– DB Objects
Now the application...
Finally...
• Do Experiment!
• Don't get caught up in spiritual debates about
Frameworks
• Analyze based on your needs
• Don't try to reinvent the wheel everytime, unless you
plan on making a better wheel
• Do join the community and help make all this even
better!
And....
QUESTIONS?!

Integration of Frameworks For Rapid Web Development

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Integration of Frameworks For Rapid Web Development

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Integration of Frameworks for Rapid

Markus Popp & Duleepa “Dups” Wijayawardhana

Download the presentation here

• The goal of this presentation:

• We'll examine a real-world case study in deploying a frameworks-

• Judge for yourself: A sample application

● We want to make the house building easier. Remember

• A framework can be for any language that you choose

• While LAMP still holds true, the future of the web is

● Highly ranked on Alexa.

● Typical LAMP stack with load balanced servers, dbs

● The site has grown organically over a decade with

● We are now 5 developers situated in Australia,

• Remember there are many coding/architecture

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