Fordnox

Today I have passed Zend Framework Certification Exam. That does not make me a better programmer, but that makes makes me second Lithuanian (first one is Aurelijus Valeisa) to do so. Of course, it is not the reason I took it.
All I can say now, that it actually does not matter very much whether you have a ZFC badge or not. My main reason was to prove myself, that I have learned something new from the past half a year. So I am happy with that.
For those who are considering to take the exam here is my advices:

• ZF is currently in 1.9 version and exam is 1.5. A lot of new things have been added from then. So think for yourself, maybe it is not so interesting to go back a few steps while preparing.
• Read ZF study guide – “almost” everything is in there to pass the exam
• Have a good memory, some answers looks very similiar
• In my case I got a lot of questions about Zend_Filter and Zend_Form
• Some questions you have to type in
• Practice with framework by developing simple application, that would work for the best

Good luck for everyone

These are some interesting links from Google. Little techniques that every PHP developer should make as habits. I think some of them are really effective.
Check those links:

PHP optimization advice from Google
Response to Google’s optimization advices
Another response to Google’s optimization advices
More on PHP performance

For a long time I have been considering whether it worth passing Zend PHP5 exam or not. Does it make any difference ? Well hell yes, it does. I am not saying this is very hard exam if you are working with PHP on daily basis, but having this little note about yourself makes big influence to your mind. It shows your true commitment to what you do.

A few words about exam. For me it looked very similar to Mock exams, which I have bought with exam voucher. It was not necessary but I think that helped me. After reading Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide, I have taken 4 mock exams with a grade “Excellent” and considered that was enough for me. Next I went to Pearson VUE and passed real exam in about 45min. To my mind 90 minutes it is more than enough. There was some tricky questions, but I am sure you will handle it with no problem.

Now I am looking forward of passing Zend Framework Certification. It is a shame that ZF is 1.8.4 version as I am writing this post, and exam is based on v1.5. But non the less I will take it and write about that experiance.

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I want to share my example Zend Soap Server module. This is Zend Framework module, with default folders structure. You can just drop it your “modules” directory and server will be ready for work.
My aim was to show how Service documentation is made “on the fly”. You only need to change DocBlock in service class. Fully working documentation will be generated by reflection class.

Some things worth mentioning:

• I have left ini_set(“soap.wsdl_cache_enabled”, “0″); because $server->setWsdlCache(false); does nothing
• Authentication example is for demo only and should not be considered as proposed solution.

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