Case Study - PHP Data Services To Extract Content from Drupal Database

In this case study " PHP Data Services Extract Content from Drupal Database", I intended to present how Data Service concepts can be applied to extract data with marketing value from a CMS database and publish it as web services. I used the drupal instance deployed at http://wso2.org as the CMS for the use case. And as the data service framework, I used WSF/PHP data services library, as it requires minimum changes to the existing infrastructure (the LAMP stack).

ScreenCast - How to Consume a Web Service Using WSF/PHP

You can watch a Screencast on How to Consume a Web Service Using WSF/PHP from WSO2 Oxygent Tank (wso2.org) developer portal

Mashups for the Enterprise

Can Mashups be useful in an enterprise setup, or are they only for those who fun loving folks to put things together and do wired stuff?

Well, you can do use Mashups in an enterprise setup. How?

Decision supporting tools are very welcome in decision making in an organization. Often, we have data, lots of them, available in various forms. SOA technologies available today make the data readily accessible, with ease, across systems. However, they are still data. What is required is to have meaning to those data, in other words to turn them into information to help make decisions that would direct the enterprise in the right direction. Mashups can help here, aggregating multiple services into one stop shop information sources.

As an example, you could use a Mashup to track how you are doing with your CRM. Aggregate CRM data into a Mashup dashboard to monitor customer queries, their frequencies, time to respond, and the like.

Now, in order to do this, you need tools, serious tools, tools like WSO2 Mashup Server.

If you look into the CRM example that I mentioned above, you need to be able to access data as services, and then aggregate those into meaningful representations. According to the overview of the technical capabilities of the Mashup server, provided by Channa, the product manager for the project, you can easily deal with data services. Not only that, in the CRM example, security is paramount, as you would not want the sensitive data like those on your customers to be leaked out. So you need, trusted, proved and battle tested security system in place. And again, as Channa has explained, WSO2 Mashup server is equipped with such security capabilities.

mooshup.com, an online hosted instance of WSO2 Mashup server not only shows that it works, but also proves that it is battle tested.

All the features in the WSO2 Mashup server are well thought of and put in place to help the enterprises use Mashups. However, you are still only interested in the fun part of it, nothing prohibits you from that.

PHP Web Services Interoperability Expanding

WSO2 Web services framework for PHP (WSF/PHP) was featured on Microsoft TechEd in June. And now, the contours of interoperability is expanding. In addition to the .NET and Java implementations, Perl, Python and Ruby are being added to the story. So it is becoming reality. Real world applications, written in different languages, can seamlessly interoperate, not only at basic SOAP level, but also with advanced Web services protocols such as security.

[ANN] WSO2 WSF/PHP Demo site Launched

WSO2 WSF/PHP team is pleased to announce the launch of WSO2 WSF/PHP Demo Site - http://labs.wso2.org/wsf/php

WSO2 WSF/PHP Demo site is a place where users can try out demonstrations powered by WSO2 Web Service Framework for PHP (WSF/PHP) online. In addition to that it gives the facility to study, view the source code and refer related articles, tutorials for each demo.

We invite the WSF/PHP community to login to the site and give feedback on demos by rating and commenting on them.

You can post suggestions and possible improvements to the demo site via WSO2 WSF/PHP mailing list wsf-php-user@wso2.org

Thanks for you interest in WSO2 WSF/PHP Demo site

-- WSO2 WSF/PHP Team --
http://wso2.org/projects/wsf/php

Most Exciting Features of Upcoming WSO2 WSF/PHP Release

We have packed and tested WSO2 Web services framework version 1.2.0. Release note will go out next Monday.

I am very excited about this release. The key features to look out for are:

• WSDL generation
  • We have improved the code first model a great deal. This release will have the greatest WSDL generation capabilities that the PHP world has ever seen
• WSDL Mode improvements
  • Now you can provide a WSDL with security policies and the framework is capable of dealing with those policies and enforce them
• Class mapping support for services
  • So far we only supported exposing PHP functions as Web service operations. This release has added support to expose the member functions of a PHP class as service operations
• We also have provided Windows and Linux binaries of the framework that that would work with Zend Core

As always, it is open source (Apache license) and free to download and use as you wish. Download now and enjoy these excitements!!!