Sydney PHP Developers Meetup October 4, 2007

PHP developers of all levels from the Sydney region are invited to our October 2007 meeting. This month we have two presentations, one hands-on and one more technical.

1. Trac, a web-based software project management and bug/issue tracking system with version control integration(Rich Buggy of Zoombug);
2. Advanced Google Maps mash-up construction with PHP (Mike Purvis of Google).

Rich will outline Trac - an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects, a hands-on demo showing how to install it and use its features to maximise your project.

Mike, co-author of Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax will present an advanced Google Maps mash-up construction, highlighting the following:

* Importing a large dataset from a Shapefile into MySQL (using shp2text and then regex)
* Using PHP to pre-compute nested clusters of points (using k-means or k-means++), and then storing these cluster groups in MySQL
* At request time, deciding what level of granularity is required, and sending appropriate JSON data (individual points, or if there are too many, clusters of pointers) to the browser.
* Using JavaScript to create different markers conveying the groupings to the user.

In Mike’s own words this is a fair amount to cover, but it will give meeting attendees the chance to see how an advanced mash-up can handle massive data sets. Mike will be available for a Q&A session for those more curious about the techniques in use.

Official Website: http://www.sydphp.org/2007/09/27/september-2007-meeting/