Tomorrow night we’ll again host Edward Kietlinski at New York PHP.

He’ll talk about the latest offerings from Zend to bring your PHP applications to their developer cloud.

Soon, you’ll also be able to deploy your production-ready applications to the IBM SmartCloud.

RSVP now for Tuesday night’s meeting at IBM in midtown Manhattan.

Or, if you can’t make it in person, watch online with Cal Evans.

IBM developerWorks has just published the final part in our series on migrating a PHP application from MySQL to DB2.

Learn why to move a PHP application to DB2, how to plan the migration, how to execute it, how to support it, and how to handle potential risks based on the experience of an IBM intranet application case study. This four-part series shares lessons from a successful MySQL-to-DB2 migration for a mission-critical PHP intranet application used by 4,000 global users within IBM to support content production for ibm.com.

• Part 1: Prepare for your migration
• Part 2: Migrate your data
• Part 3: Convert your PHP code
• Part 4: Deploy your application

In addition to sharing our own experience, the series highlights the number of resources available to you to carry out your own migration.

This month we have a double feature at New York PHP.

PHP on IBM System i consultant Alan Seiden will give us an update on what transpired at last week’s ZendCon.

10gen MongoDB evangelist Steve Francia will provide an overview on using PHP with MongoDB.

RSVP now for the meeting at IBM in midtown Manhattan on Tuesday October 25th or watch online starting at 6:30pm ET.

Well, it took just under two years and quite a bit of marketshare loss, but I found some time to release my long promised native BlackBerry application for Metro-North commuter train schedules.

You can download NYC North Trains for free, over-the-air. I’ve tested it on OS 5 and 6 devices such as the Curve, Style, Storm 2, Bold, Tour and Torch.

Like the simple Web interface I’ve provided for nearly five years, the native app offers an interface to the MTA schedule data optimized for mobile devices.

However, it also offers some features that make the experience quite a bit more convenient for BlackBerry users.

• Simple schedule selection using BlackBerry dropdowns and date picker
• The ability to save your preferred origin and destination (and toggle them depending on which way you’re going)
• Ability to email the schedule results from the device
• Ability to save a particular departure to your calendar to block your travel time

Of course, this application comes with the standard disclaimer.

Not affiliated with the MTA or the States of New York and Connecticut. This tool uses live information directly from mta.info, so schedules are always based on the latest available information. This tool retains no copies of schedule information from the MTA.

Enjoy and let me know what other enhancements you’d like to see.

IBM developerWorks just published an article I wrote about using the Development and Test Cloud to create PHP applications.

The tutorial covers some scenarios that make the cloud compelling for PHP developers and then takes the reader through the installation of Zend Server with DB2 on the IBM Cloud.

If the content looks familiar, you may have seen an earlier version in a print copy I handed out at New York PHP (PDF) late last year.

Speaking of the cloud and NYPHP, don’t forget to join us next week to look at an alternative way to use the cloud to develop PHP applications using Amazon and RightScale.

IBM developerWorks has just published the first article in a series that Mark Nusekabel, Yan Li Mu and I wrote about our experience migrating a large PHP and MySQL application to DB2.

In the four part series we look at preparation, switching databases, porting code, and finally deploying the application. This first installment covers the steps to plan and resources to consult when starting a migration project.

Along with the MySQL to DB2 migration Redbook, a key technology supplementing each step in the process is the IBM Smart Business Development and Test Cloud.

If you already have access to the Development and Test pilot, the PHP developer’s guide (PDF) can give you some tips for configuring Zend Server along with DB2 using virtual machines in that cloud.

The article series and the developer’s guide may also be useful to those who have a contract for the GA version of Development and Test.

Another option to evaluate DB2 for a migration is to use the Amazon EC2 AMIs pre-configured with IBM software individually.

Or, if you’re interested in managing several instances or more complex configurations, RightScale and IBM have collaborated (PDF) to bridge the Amazon and IBM clouds.

So, if you’re considering a new relational backend for your application, the developerWorks migration series, the PHP developer’s guide for the IBM cloud, and the images within the Amazon and IBM clouds will give you a new set of tools to make evaluating the move and executing the switchover much easier.

This month Hans Zaunere and Nate Abele will give us a look at the new features in PHP 5.3 and how they’re used in production today.

Specifically, these NYPHP regulars will cover three new major language features: namespaces, late static binding, and closures.

RSVP now for the meeting at IBM in midtown Manhattan on Tuesday July 27th.

Tonight we’re hosting Scott MacVicar from Facebook as he presents their highly optimized version of PHP called HipHop.

HipHop translates and compiles regular PHP source into a C++ binary that reduces CPU and memory usage and thus helps Facebook serve twice the content with a two-thirds the resources of a stock Apache and PHP system.

Look for the slides in our New York PHP user group archives shortly.

Follow development of the open source HipHop project at github and keep up with Scott via his blog.