Lorna Mitchell

Every year we collect more data than before, and the tools we use to manage that data are evolving to accommodate our changing needs - but it can be difficult to keep up with all the innovations! This session will give you a tour of what's happening in open source databases, from someone who lives the adventures of open source data in her day job. You will travel from the well-trodden paths of relational databases, through the leafy glades of time series, to the landmarks of search and document databases. This session is recommended for people with an interest in software who want to learn about the overall trends, license changes, rising stars, and which database technologies are here to stay.

Python is brilliant at many things, but did you know it could also create beautiful documents from simple markup? Discover rst2pdf in this session.

Introducing: rst2pdf. This open source python project enables you to write simple, text-based markup and generate beautiful PDF documents with a single command. Using text-based content makes collaboration simple as source control tools can be used; it also allows content to be easily repurposed to different documents without reformatting. The styling can be changed independently and different formats produced from the same content source - it also supports syntax highlighting. This talk will also cover a bit about the state of the open source project itself and how people can get involved as users or contributors.

Webhooks are the natural evolution of modern applications beyond using APIs to integrate between systems. This talk will showcase the webhook examples you're already familiar with, and show you how to handle these features in your own applications.

In an increasingly connected world, APIs are key to great tools and effective workflows. What is better than an API? A webhook of course! Webhooks are the modern way for integrating systems and allowing them to react to one another. This session will cover what a webhook is, when you might want to use one, and some examples for handling webhooks in your own PHP projects. You'll see some examples of tools to help during the development process, and some real examples of webhooks in action.

Describe your API with OpenAPI Spec (what Swagger grew up to be) and open the door to beautiful, adaptable documentation and a world of other possibilities.

Open API Specification is a machine and human readable way to describe APIs. From these specs we can generate documentation, create libraries, and ensure that our users know exactly what to expect from our APIs. This talk shows you around OAS from the beginning, showing how to create the specs and recommending some tools to help the process. Once you have the spec, things get interesting and this talk will showcase some of the things that you can offer once your API is described in this way. This session is recommended for writers looking to become more API-savvy and API engineers wanting to make their APIs more useful to their users.

With new PHP versions being released more often, and projects including Drupal increasing their minimum requirements for PHP versions, it's clear that things are changing rapidly. This session is all about the changes introduced in newer versions of PHP (5.3 onwards), and what that means for PHP projects everywhere. There will be practical examples of the shiny new features, advice on finding hosting and safely upgrading existing projects, and news about the performance improvements you can expect as you move between the versions. The way PHP is evolving is truly exciting so come and join in on the fun!