Our Favorite ibm_db2 Settings for PHP

PHP on IBM iWhen supporting our Seiden CP+ PHP, we found that documentation for the “classic” ibm_db2 extension for IBM i wasn’t easy to find.

To help ourselves as well as others, we updated the PHP.net manual to describe each ibm_db2.i5_* setting. This blog post links to that manual page and highlights a few of our favorite ibm_db2 settings.

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Continuous Integration for PHP Extensions

(Co-written with Alan Seiden)

CI/CDContinuous Integration (CI) ensures that every time a developer commits changes to a version control system such as Git, the code is automatically built and subjected to automated tests.

CI has been invaluable to us. As maintainers of PHP’s PDO_IBM and ibm_db2 extensions, we use CI to ensure high quality across platforms.

Platforms supported by PHP’s extensions for Db2 include IBM i, Unix/Linux, and Windows. While our focus is IBM i, we must ensure compatibility with the others. Reliance on manual testing would introduce the risk of broken builds or subtle bugs. Automation is a must.

In this post, we explain how we use CI principles when building and testing PHP’s Db2 extensions.

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Detecting Memory Leaks in PHP Extensions During Development

memory leakWhen a PHP extension has a memory leak, mysterious crashes can result, forcing users to restart the web server for relief.

As official maintainers of the ibm_db2 and PDO_IBM extensions, we’ve been on a quest to find and eliminate any memory leaks from these popular PHP modules.

With such a comprehensive goal, we needed a strategy. For extensions that have comprehensive test suites we decided that, in addition to reviewing the usual regression tests, why not also use the tests to detect leaks?

What follows is a technical look at how we do it.

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