Martijn's PHP Coding Blog

As promised in my last post (twenty days ago — life has been busy!) I am working through the MySQL Developer 5.0 examinations. I have just completed the first of two exams and I am trying to find time to cram for the second exam.

There are plenty of changes going on here — the original exam MySQL exam provider was changed this year from Pearson Vu to Prometric as Sun Microsystems acquired MySQL.

And now of course Sun is in limbo as it in turn is being acquired by Oracle — a deal being blocked in Europe because of , yes :  MySQL. For a by the minute discussion of what is going on there just keep track of the postings at Planet MySQL.

Expect many FAQ’s to be out of date. It is better to check the MySQL Certification forum for the latest changes. The person to note is David Stokes who is the MySQL certification manager and who posts regularly to this forum. Read the rest of this entry »

taipei 101 by orange tuesday @ flickr

I have been busy these last couple of weeks preparing for the Zend Certified Engineer / PHP5 exam. Although I have been using PHP for years – I never had a need to “prove” this. That might change in a few months as I start looking for a new job. Doing the Zend exam in preparation of this sounded like a good start. My first step was to order the Zend PHP5 Certification Study Guide by Davey Shafik and Ben Ramsey from Amazon.

The difficulty is not so much in the technologies — most things in PHP are very straightforward — but the sheer scope of what PHP covers and the potential for in dept questions. The exam covers programming basics such as converting hex / octal and decimal, XML & XPath, Web programming, OOP, Databases, Pattern theory etc. The study guide covers most topics but it alone is not enough to pass the exam. It will set you on the right path — but you really need to dive deeper. Read the rest of this entry »