Sorry that I need to abuse my blog for this. Usually my posts always say something about PHP, PostgreSQL and MySQL, even if sometimes most of the blog post is about Frisbee. But this time its entirely off topic, because I am trying to help my sister and her husband who was just layed-off from work without any prior notice. As a result he was pushed to do what he was thinking in the back of his head anyways, start his own business as an A/C repair service company. Of course now things are a bit rushed and so he is having trouble finding enough clients to keep him busy enough.

So today I asked a question in #mysql and got no reply, so I asked the same question in #postgresql and got some interesting replies. The question was if its "good practice" to rely on the RDBMS to detect constraint violations or if one should try to avoid this by running relevant SELECT's before any writes.

One of the key things that attracts developers to the OSS world is the no nonsense attitude people are allowed to display in OSS development. Where in the closed source world, developers are rarely allowed to openly explain the pro's and con's of their product, its expected in the OSS world. People that BS will get slapped hard quickly. It doesn't pay off and at best the benefit would be short term until someone takes another look. There are no restrictions on publishing benchmarks etc. This is awesome.

What if which ever way you turn, you think are seeing a postcard? What if you could take the afternoon off to go skiing? What if you would one day come to assume that every city has a beautiful lake at the center and mountains surrounding? What if every movie would always be shown in the original version without having to go to that single cinema in town that did? Speaking of languages, what if you could get by with whatever language you speak, or just practice one of many languages without having to go an a trip? What if going for a snack after one of the monthly user group meetings, feels more like a speakers dinner at a conference? Yes, then you must be working in Zurich, the up and coming PHP capital of the world! :)

In good old Moerfelden for this years edition of the International PHP Conference, after having skipped last years event. As always I am looking forward to meeting a lot of old friends and getting to know a few new faces from the PHP world.