We are delighted to invite you to Drupal For Enterprise, an event focusing on the common benefits and challenges of using Drupal in a business organisation.

Whether you're evaluating Drupal or are already using it, this event is a great opportunity to learn from the experience of other organisations, put your questions to the experts, and connect with the Drupal community.

Presentations

We welcome suggestions for presentations - even better, do you have a talk you'd like to give?

These are the topics we plan to cover:

Drupal has been selected as a finalist for the SourceForge 2008 Community awards in 5 categories.

Special thanks to Nicholas Thompson, Michelle, Rahul and others in who were involved in the nomination and promotion of this award: http://drupal.org/node/267469

http://www.enterprise2conf.com/
Demo pavilion pass are available for free here: http://www.enterprise2conf.com/exhibition/demo-pavilion.php
Tuesday, June 10
11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
4:30 PM – 6:30 PM

Wednesday, June 11
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
4:30 PM – 6:30 PM

Enterprise2Open unconference: http://www.enterprise2conf.com/conference/e2open.php
If you are interested in presenting at Enterprise 2 Open you should be able to sign up at the event itself.

CEMPER.COM is seeking a

Web Developer

with
strong software development skills

Acquia would like to thank everyone who voted for our 1 minute video submission for the Enterprise 2.0 contest. We've now made it to the second round and we've added an important section to the video, the Drupal Ecosystem, with dozens of Drupal consulting company logo's.

How did we select these logo's to represent the Drupal ecosystem:
1) Looked for sponsors of Drupalcon Barcelona and Drupalcon Boston
2) Drupal Association Organization Members

I posted some internal benchmarks from the Xapian module we are working on in the Trellon.com blog. This post describes the performance gains using Xapian can have and does some benchmarking on a really, really slow server.

Would love it if someone could verify those results. We are about to take the sample size of the data up to about 1mil nodes and repeat.

M

Acquia has submitted a 1 minute video about Drupal to the Enterprise 2.0 Launchpad contest. The video site, is actually a Drupal site. If you get a chance to watch this one minute video and vote, it will help give Drupal some exposure at Enterprise 2.0.

http://launchpad.enterprise2conf.com/node/14

First, for those that don't want to read the full post, here's the "30-second elevator speech":
This post to to discuss using Seleinum with Drupal. Specifically using Maven to run the selenium tests and writing the Selenium tests in Java.
The example code be downloaded from the Workhabit Inc. public repository here: https://svn.workhabit.com/svn/public/drupal/selenium/trunk
One must have the following installed to run:
1. Firefox
2. Java 1.5+
3. Maven
All 3 are easy to install and aquire. Once you download the code from the repository, you can just navigate to the directory and run:

EDIT: There will be a BOF discussion tomorrow, Wed morning at 9:00am here at Drupalcon. Please join the discussion and share your thoughts.

Following up on my previous post introducing the in-progress RDF API for Drupal 6.x, I'm going to be, bit by bit, posting some of the materials that I've earlier put together internally for the project this is being developed for. Development of this project is supported through M.C. Dean and MakaluMedia on behalf of their clients.

I start my Drupal + Oracle research since the end of Drupal 4.7 life cycle (around Oct 2006), based on my client's request. The project is still running, but I am not satisfy about its progress. After keep trace in Drupal database stack implementation for more than years, it is time for focusing on Drupal 7.x development.

So what are the changes since 4.7.x? And what will be happened for 7.x? I would like to share my research progress with you, and so let's brain storming for what's next :-)

Abstract

Drupal 6.0 is revamped with Schema API, so what's next for Drupal 7.x? PDO for sure! With this powerful data-access abstraction layer, workload will much reduced for DB abstraction layer designers and developers, and finally benefit our contribute developers and end users.

By the way, together with the decision of Drupal 7.x + PDO, there is also some voice about moving PostgreSQL (and so other potential databases support, e.g. Oracle, DB2, MSSQL, etc) support away from core, but contribute; on the other hand, add official SQLite support into Drupal core, together with MySQL.

Is this really a good idea? Or even if it is possible? As an existing Drupal + PostgreSQL users, what will this affect your daily work? As a potential customer of Drupal + Oracle/DB2/MSSQL/etc, is this a good new for you, or just an evil? I would like to provide some brief idea for you within this article.

Cross posting from here: http://drupal.org/node/219476

There will be a Drupal site showcase and case study contest at the upcoming Boston Drupalcon.

Submitted sites will be voted online and judged by a panel of community nominated judges and some great prizes will be awarded to the winners! This is a chance to have all your hard work creating amazing Drupal sites recognized.

Enhance cross database compatibility is important for our Drupal Core, especially when we are going to ship D7 with PHP5.2.x PDO implementation. BTW, this will require number of individual patches, so your help and review are required - add it to the top list with a brief description and an estimate of the time to review. Once reviewed, move the issues to the bottom "reviewed" list, perhaps with your name attached.

My primary battle plan should be enhance Drupal cross database compatibility. I have involved in this topic for around a year, and I would like to keep it on going. To accomplish this target, I would like to complete the following tasks before D7 code freeze:

• Improve Database API for better abstraction

  Something should be done before any other targets, e.g. resolve reserved words conflict, split drivers into individual files for better management, indeed but simple abstraction for different database syntax, add INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE abstraction and enhance drupal_write_record() abstraction, etc. With a better common base for multiple database development, we will need much less time to study the differences between databases than that of before.

• Add PHP PDO supporting

  Shipping D7 with PHP PDO should be a spotlight topic, since it is now official package for PHP5.2.x, and legacy drivers will soon be removed in PHP6.x. We may need some cleanup in our core query syntax, in order to let PDO get works.

• Introduce more database backend

  Up to this point, I would like to introduce some other database backend for D7, e.g. Oracle, SQLite, IBM DB2 and also MSSQL. If we are able to support SQLite in D7, which also means we are going to standardize our core queries into SQL92 standard, the problem for maintain multiple database backend should no longer a critical problem; if we are able to support Oracle, the most complicated database I guess, this should no longer a problem for us to implement drivers for other databases.

I have summarize most of my personal battle targets in here. Most logic are proved as functioning, and they are all get set for the open of D7 public development. On the other hand, I would like to explore if this may integrate with other interest musings with Data API, so we will able get all stuff better in D7 ;-)

Hello,

We are looking for speakers for the upcoming DrupalCon in Boston. Since you are subscribed to a business and marketing related group, you might be especially interested in the "Business and Marketing" track (see http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/business-and-marketing-track-description... ).

This track covers the following topics:

• The Drupal ecosystem
• Businesses learning to use Drupal
• Case studies
• Showcases: NPO, Education, News, Media, Government, Healthcare

So, I've had some free time latley, and I've started back on the database API layers (DB2 and SQL Server currently).
However, I have found 2 disturbing issues.

Overview
First, I'm currently exploring the following 3 ways to connect to sql server:
1. FreeTDS
2. php_mssql driver
3. MSFT SQL Driver ( See pcorbetts posting for a link to the driver )

1. PHP 5.2.5 breaks support for SQL Server

There are some major issues, in my opinion, that are preventing MSSQL from being fully supported in PHP and thus Drupal. Most, if not all, of these revolve around the terribly outdated DBLIB library - forcing some to use alternative libraries (FreeTDS or the recently released SQL Server Driver for PHP). I want to get this out in the open so that we may address them appropriately. I have run into these myself and have had to do some creative work-arounds to get Drupal to behave the way I need it to while running on SQL Server.

As a site goes live and we do performance tweaking and benchmarking one of the common results is adding database indexes. I post this into the CCK group since one of the common sources of slow queries is for queries against the CCK tables. For example, a site that has a block that queries a field table to look for information about that field for every page load can quickly make its way into the slow query log. Adding an index to the field is likely to be the best solution.

I have been working to get SQL Server 2000 to work with Drupal 5.3. Everything seems to be working except for a small pagination issue. As part of this, I have been prepping it for use with 2005/2008 as well, but wanted to share with the group to see if we should agree upon a common way to distinguish between different versions (since syntax and functions vary so much between them). I am assuming that there will be differences between 2005 and 2008 that we may have to account for, so this doesn't have to be 2000 vs. 2005-specific.

A new SQL Server 2000/2005 driver (preview version) for PHP improves compatibility between the two: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/technologies/php/default.mspx

Now there's native support for PHP that will save us from having to deal with freeTDS and other things. For example, the current limitation between PHP and SQL Server is that it truncates text pulled from a varchar to 255 characters. I currently have to change anything > varchar(255) to a TEXT datatype in SQL Server to avoid this issue.

Has anyone else used this in their SQL Server setup?

A new IIS 6/7 FastCGI extension was recently released: http://www.iis.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1521 It runs on top of ISAPI and generally makes PHP within IIS more stable. Has anyone tried installing this yet? Any noticeable performance boost? I'll be setting it up soon and will reply with my own opinion soon...

I'm cross posting this from here in case anyone else has any information to share: http://drupal.org/node/187464

Hi Fellow Drupalers,
I'm working on a session for BADCAMP (http://badcamp07.org) where we will walk through some cool, popular and high performance Drupal sites. The main focus here is high-profile, big companies, high traffic. What is the biggest and highest traffic Drupal site out there?

Hello, here are some examples for corporate sites. I am sure there are more.

http://www.knaufinsulation.com - Knauf Insulation corporate Web portal
http://pwcmecareers.com
http://www.hc-si.com
http://v-teches.com/
http://www.acnefree.com/af
http://projectstars.com - corporate blogging
http://flex.org/showcase/ - Adobe software technology
http://genieknows.com/about
http://warnerbrosrecords.com/ - Warner Brothers rockin' it with Drupal.
http://research.yahoo.com/ - http://buytaert.net/yahoo-using-drupal

Please help fill in this list.

After 4 days (!?) development, a new DB2 driver for Drupal 6.x is now ready for testing. It takes IBM's D5 DB2 implementation as base reference, and reuse almost all Oracle driver for Drupal 6.x progress for overcoming DB2-specific limitations.

After over 1.5 years of development (since 29/11, 2005), plus number of developers contribution, and help of Drupal 6.x schema API, a new Oracle driver for Drupal 6.x is now ready for testing.

The latest version of Oracle driver overcome a lot of Oracle-specific limitation, and able to work well as like as existing Drupal database driver, e.g. MySQL and PgSQL.

I'm a MCDBA/MCSD and I don't want to get rusty with MSSQL - I'd like to contribute to the mssql driver development in Drupal- I have a pretty good knowledge of SQL Server 2000 (a modest amount of 2005 too) and data access layers like OLE DB. How can I help out?

We are looking for developers who are skilled in Drupal as well as general php, mysql, and open source solutions.

We have a full-time position that will require being in the office Monday - Friday 9ish to 5ish. Telecommuting is not an option for full-time employees.

We are also looking for contract developers who are located in (in order of priority) Denver, Colorado, any where in the United States. We'd like to have access to the developer during our business hours. Telecommuting may be an option for contract developers.

Please send your resume and links to your work.

So, I've had a few inquiries over the last few months about random node generation as I have implemented it successfully for a client. I have posted a full write up of it on my blog. Feel free to comment on it here or on my blog; I will post a patch when I have a chance and if there is interest.

Article link: http://earnestberry.com/node/13

There are a "LOT" of contrib modules out there. Even more so, there are a great deal of good modules that have been neglected. Lets be honest, a developers time is precious, and we all get spread thin and a bit scattered sometimes, and we leave our children (modules) to the way side for other things (like "bill-paying" modules/development so we can eat from time to time :) ).

Khalid Bahey is well on his way to getting a patch into Drupal 6 for spitting out logging of watchdog entries so that:
1. They can be routed to a different source other than the database, from a flat file to syslog support. The watchdog table can crush many sites.
2. Actions can be taken depending on the messages. Get notification via email, IM, pager, etc. depending on the severity levels of messages in your watchdog.

This will be a fantastic feature for Drupal 6....but really, we need it today for Drupal 5 as well. I've spoken with Khalid and he's willing to backport both the patch as well as the supporting modules. The plan of attack is:

I am wanting to set up a site where people will be getting to the site from another, external site. When they click on the link from the external site, it will take them to my Drupal site where I want to grab a "userid" and customize the site based on what they want. So an example of this is the following:

site1 they sign up for an "online course" (or courses). They are given a link that would look similar to: http://site2.com/?userid=12345&course=45678

I first started experimenting with Drupal because it worked with PostgreSQL, and GnuCash had a PostgreSQL backend. I hoped to make them work together. I still think it would be a good idea. More on this later.

I am sorry for the poor quality of the screen cast. I've never done one, and I used "wink" to do it. I'll probabley update the "how to" later down the road.

So, I made a screen-cast of my quickbooks module. It's very pre-alpha, and the screen-cast is not the best. But I did it quickly. I've been getting a few inquiries, and I figured this would be the easiest way to explain it. I'll be releasing it to the cvs by the end of this week so hopefully I can some collaboration on it.

Link to video: http://earnestberry.com/node/7/play

Currently what it does:
- Brings in customers

Hello. So, I have done e-commerce support for PayFlow Pro. This module will probably be released soon and I currently did one implementation in E-Com v. 1-2, and I am polishing off one for v3 (all 4.7+ for now). I'm prob. going to port to 5.0.
This has been tested to work on both Windows AND Linux (windows creates/uses a COM object, linux uses the pfpro binary).

I'm posting to see who is interested in PayFlow Pro support to get a few people started to kick up some bugs from the program (test it) so that it is rock solid.

FYI About the General Arch. of the Module

Have a strong desire to help great progressive organizations make the world a better place? Looking to work with a fantastic team of Drupal developers and build out some really cutting edge sites? Can you write code better than a thousand monkeys with a million years on their hands?

Trellon is a development shop based in Washington, DC and we are looking for a few good programmers to work with our talented team of Drupal developers on some big projects. We’re offering a 1 – 2 month contract to build out a couple of client sites.

So we recently met with a client we going to take on about their system and where they want to go. They are a well established B2B company that deal with many business. They are not a large company, but they do a fair amount of business. Currently, their systems are very old and outdated, however, they work.

So, you want to speed up your large site? Well, start by cleaning up your SQL if you're accessing large tables. We are running Drupal on top of MS-SQL for a client. We have one table that has 7.5 millinon rows in it. Now, I had mentioned what I am about to talk about in another post before, but I know have some hard numbers to base it off of.
So anyway, this table had 7.5+ million rows, and the page was loading mighty slow. Running it 10 times, Devel query showed where I was bleeding...more like gushing time:

<

ol>

Ok, I'm just going to start listing the SQL statements that I find that need changing here. Trying to release patches for them all and keep up is getting out of hand:

Watchdog
- Line 123, remove the u.uid, it is not needed since the w.* already gives you that column.

(more to come soon)

So, I was checking out ODBTP < http://odbtp.sourceforge.net/ > and considering making a drupal driver for it. This would allow many database to now be supported through ODBC. I also hear that ODBTP is just as fast as a native driver and the speed of ODBC really depends on the implementation of the vendor of ODBC. Just seeing if anyone had any experience with it and/or thoughts?

Ok, i'll be the one to call the pink elephant in the room.....stored procedures do exisit. There I said it. :). With MySQL 5 starting to support them, Postgres has had them, and the push latley to start using a wider array and more robust DB's (oracle, mssql, DB2), it is time I think to start thinking about a database abstraction layer to handel stored procedures. I'm thinking perhaps something like this:

/**
* @param $proc_name Name of the stored proc.
* @param $args Argements to send to the proc indexed by the variables name. e.g. array('name' => 'Jim Smith');