Zend is pleased to be sponsoring php|tek 2009, taking place in Chicago, Illinois, between May 19 and 22, 2009. There will be a number of sessions offered by Zend speakers covering a wide range of PHP topics. Join Matthew Weier O’Phinney, Software Architect for Zend Framework, Eli White, Community Relations Manager and Editor-in-Chief of DevZone and Mike Pavlak, Solution Consultant. Sessions include:

Practical SVN for PHP Developers
In-depth tutorial day: May 19, 2009 @ 13:00 – 16:00
Presented by: M. W. O'Phinney and L. Mitchell

You've read all the Best Practices materials, attended workshops on them, and you're finally convinced that you need version control as an integral part of your company's workflow. But where do you start? Subversion is potentially the most adopted non-distributed version control system available today. Its price – free – is compelling enough, but it also offers many features out of the box.

In this session, we will step you through a number of effective subversion best practices, from setting up your repositories to adding hooks for linting, code sniffing, and running your unit tests. Topics covered will include:

• Setting up your repositories, including ACLs and administration
• Working with Subversion, including commit strategies, branching and tagging strategies, merging, and handling conflicts.
• Integrating Subversion with your PHP workflow, including setting up commit hooks for code linting, code sniffing, and running unit tests

The goal is for PHP developers to walk away from the workshop with the tools necessary to setup a working version control environment in their company, tailored to their workflow.

Highly Scalable Web Applications
Day #1: May 20, 2009 @ 09:45 – 10:45
Presented by: Eli White

A constant pariah on web applications is scaling once you become popular. It's not always an easy task (ok, never). This talk will go into depth on a few of the most common techniques for making your website scalable. So that you can leave with enough knowledge to apply this, if needed. Or just to plan ahead so that your future projects don't preclude taking these steps when needed.

PHP on IBM i: What the Heck is That?
Day #1: May 20, 2009 @ 13:00 – 14:00
Presented by: Mike Pavlak

Many businesses in the manufacturing and distribution sectors have relied on the IBM midrange computer known as the AS/400 for many years. Throughout several name changes and feature updates customer loyalty remains one of the hallmarks of the mostly RPG based system. Today, the IBM i can run PHP right along with its legacy RPG and COBOL applications giving companies the opportunity to leverage their long term investments in software and solutions as they “modernize” their business applications. This session will describe the IBM midrange landscape and discuss why opportunities with this proprietary system could be advantageous for the expert PHP developer.

Zend Core on IBM i: Advanced Management
Day #1: May 20, 2009 @ 15:30 – 16:30
Presented by: Mike Pavlak

This session will discuss the implementation of PHP on IBM i and provide tips on installation and management of the environment. Concepts regarding i5 scalability, subsystems, updates and the very special i5Toolkit will be reviewed.

The Knight Rider Methodology to Software Development
Day #2: May 21, 2009 @ 13:30 – 14:00
Presented by: Eli White

As all children of the 80's know, Knight Rider was a story about an otherwise 'normal' law enforcement officer who through the use of Technology (KITT) become an unstoppable machine. In this talk find out how programmers should be using technology/tools to make themselves better and more productive.