The book covers the entire development life cycle of PHP projects, and can be ordered through the php|architect website. php|architect has the following description:

"Whether you are running a large scale web app in a PHP-based environment, or if you are considering switching your site to PHP, our new book, php|architect's Enterprise PHP Development will surely be a valuable resource for you and your development team. This book is the only one of its kind and is unparalleled in terms of content and practical usefulness."

I leave that last sentence up to the judgement of the reader, but it's true that it's one of the few books that's not about PHP code, but about the entire development life cycle.

I owe a lot of thanks to Elizabeth Naramore and Marco Tabini of php|architect, for getting this book out.

If you order the book, also check out its companion website. I will collect feedback on that site, and will regularly post errata or other updates.

The most important however is that it fixes an XSS vulnerability based on the usage of $_SERVER["PHP_SELF"] that we had overlooked.

It is recommended to upgrade ATK applications to ATK 6.1.

The release can be found on http://www.achievo.org/atk/download

The changelog is included in the release, and at http://www.achievo.org/atkdemo/atk/doc/CHANGES

It's finally here, along with a new website which has a lot less fuzz, and is more to the point.

The changelog is a whopping 1056 lines. This translates to rougly 300 changes for this release. We might say this is a new generation, which is marked with a new major version number, and a new default layout. And it finally has ajax support (the way you are used to in ATK: add a flag to add autocompletion to a field, add one line of code to make things refresh on the fly). Most of you have been using the nightlies for months now, so this may not be new for you, but many companies are still using 5.6 for their apps.

The new release can be downloaded here.

Given the amount of changes, upgrading might not be trivial. Consult the forum if you need help.

http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/23992/info

Although the issue was reported directly to SecurityFocus and not to us, I want to stress that this is a bug in an old version of Achievo. Version 1.2 that was released over a year ago already had a fix for this issue. (The report originally didn't mention this but I had them include the info on 1.2 when I discovered the report.)

Those of you still running Achievo 1.1 are advised to upgrade to the latest stable version of Achievo, 1.2.1.

If that is not an option, the issue can be fixed in two ways:

• Make sure that register_globals is turned off in php.ini. The problem is not present when this setting is turned off.
• Edit index.php, and add the line $config_atkroot = "./"; right in front of the include of atk.inc

When in doubt, or if you have questions according to this issue, please consult the Achievo forum or contact me directly.

This release contains over 140 changes and improvements.

Some highlights of the changes since ATK 5.5:

• 5 new attributes, from a simple attribute for manipulating URLS to a flexible calculator that can add columns containing arbitrary calculations of other attributes, and a generic attribute that can turn any other attribute into an internationalised data field.

• A new 'shuttle' relation for easy selection of records in many-to-many relationships.
• 2 new themes, 'macoslike' and 't3skin'. The latter creates a Typo3 4.0 look for ATK, useful for integrating ATK applications into a Typo3 environment.
• An AJAX based generic data structure search functionality.
• An atkMessageQueue for relaying messages to the user.
• Many API enhancements (new methods, new features and new flags)

And many more fixes and improvements. The complete change log can be found on the release notes page.

Since Sandy took over, we've had 3 new releases. A first release candidate for Achievo 1.2 was out when he was at the helm hardly one month, and yesterday, he released Achievo 1.2.1, which contains several important bugfixes for the 1.2 branch.

I've had several remarks from users who were 'glad the project was apparently still alive after months without a release'. I think the project would've died prematurely if Sandy hadn't taken over.

As a result of the takeover, I was able to finally take the time to do some other things I've been planning to do for a while now. I've written a Typo3 ATK bridge that makes it possible to develop Typo3 backend modules in ATK. This reduces Typo3 backend modules from hundreds of lines of code to the minimal amount of coding we're used to from using ATK. This extension is currently being tested internally and will be released with a howto soon.

Also, I'm finishing up ATK 5.6. It contains some interesting new features, among which is an atkCalculatorAttribute for arbitrary calculations on fields and an atkMlWrapper which can turn any attribute into an internationalised field (sponsored by our friends at Zicht). ATK 5.6 should be out within 2 weeks.

Finally I've been spending a lot of time on epointment.com. We're finally getting somewhere with the features we need. I will be writing a 'syncing Achievo with epointment.com' howto soon. Although at its current state, we have a lot of competition from the big guys, we're seeing quite an amount of interest from Dutch people (probably because Google Calendar only has an English interface at the moment), so we're coming along nicely. We're also talking to the guys from MarkThisDate for cooperation (open standards rule!).

The largest benefit for ATK will be that we're pushing the development of the Ajax functionality in the framework. In ATK 5.7 (which might become ATK 6) you can expect a lot of (optional, ofcourse) Ajax powered functionality such as autocompletion and Partial Page Rendering.

Some highlights of the changes since ATK 5.4:

• Several enhancements to the unit-test functionality

• Improved error handling
• Tab-based access control
• Many API enhancements (new methods and new flags)

And many more fixes and improvements. The complete change log can be found on the release notes page.

This release contains numerous changes and improvements.

Some highlights of the changes since ATK 5.2.2:

• Improved performance and reduced memory footprint
• New debug console for tracing debug statements and debugging queries
• Added Open Office document generation engine
• Added a preliminary MS SQL driver
• Improved atkMetaNode (see previous blog posts)
• Recordlist caching for dramatically increased performance in admin pages
• New attributes such as an atkLiveTextPreview
• Direct linking feature for example for linking directly to edit pages from inside e-mails
• New atkConfig class for easier per-module configuration settings
• Added Traditional Chinese translation
• Hierarchical group support in authorisation
• Support for multiple named database connections

And many, many more fixes and improvements (you can see the complete change log on the release notes page).

This is a release with numerous changes and improvements. You can help us stabilise ATK 5.3 by downloading the release candidate from:

http://www.achievo.org/atk/download/releasenotes/5_3_rc1

Some highlights:

• Improved performance and reduced memory footprint
• New debug console for tracing debug statements and debugging queries
• Added a preliminary MS SQL driver
• Improved atkMetaNode (see previous blog posts)
• Recordlist caching for dramatically increased performance in admin pages
• New attributes such as an atkLiveTextPreview
• Direct linking feature for example for linking directly to edit pages from inside e-mails
• New atkConfig class for easier per-module configuration settings
• Added Traditional Chinese translation
• Hierarchical group support in authorisation
• Support for multiple named database connections

And many, many more fixes and improvements (you can see the complete change log on the release notes page).