Proposed Sessions

Beginner's Guide to Performance!

jrowny — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:20:19 +0000

This session is for people who want to make their sites fast. REALLY FAST! Even if you're running on a leased 486 in your neighbor's basement, we can still have you serving up pages faster than you can say "PHP."

Now there's about 82,000 things that can affect the performance of your website. We may not have time to go through all of them, but here's what's on the agenda (don't worry if you don't know what any of these things mean, that's the point of the session):

* Hosting Options
* Drupal's Cache Mechanisms
* Content Delivery Networks
* APC
* Memcached
* Varnish
* Static Caching (boost)
* ETags, gzip-compression and other various server tweaks
* Front end techniques such as sprites, compressing images, and minifying code
* Benchmarking (are we going faster yet?)
* We'll also cover some case studies such as a Drupal site that delivers over 1tb of video throughout the world.

Some of the things on this list are so easy to implement that you'll kick yourself for having a slow site. When you're done with this session your website's visitors and search engines will thank you for the blistering fast speed.

Slides:

Beginner's Guide to Performance.pdf

Schedule info

Status:

Proposed

Session Info

Speaker(s):

jrowny

Track:

Coding + Development

Featured:

Not Featured

Experience level:

Beginner

Drupal Bit by Bit: Quest of the Request

webkenny — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 15:15:22 +0000

Taken in its simplest form, Drupal is a procedural system that starts at line 1 of index.php and executes its code line-by-line until it outputs what a user asked for. What if we could visually explore that process to help us understand exactly how Drupal core actually works? Join webkenny and his zany cast of characters for the greatest Drupal story ever told as we explore the request in a way like you've never seen before.

Led by our hero, 8-Bit Dries (making his triumphant return in 16-Bit for Portland), we will explore the bootstrap bit by bit, traveling the configuration and cache phases, while traversing the grass plains of the variables phase. On our quest to save the Crystal Node, we'll battle form alters, sanitization of our input, the dreaded caves of Themeria, the treacherous rivers of the update system, and the castle of the evil Kitton himself to learn how to solve any problem with our knowledge of the journey!

This session is for developers looking to take their understanding of how the system works to the next level and those who have an interest in solving complicated Drupal issues.

Some of our hero's lifelong questions will be answered such as:

What is the bootstrap and its phases? Laying the groundwork for an epic journey.
What is the hook system and how does it really work?
Why do render arrays hate me? Learning to debunk the complexity of the Render API.
How does a preprocessor preprocess its preprocessors? The theme system.
What is the update system? How does it "know" what to update?
Who cares? Using this information to build better sites.

(A special thanks to Andre Moinar of BeCircle whose blog post not only helped me learn this topic but was an inspiration for the beginning of this session.)

Schedule info

Status:

Proposed

Session Info

Speaker(s):

webkenny

Track:

Coding + Development

Featured:

Not Featured

Experience level:

Intermediate

CLI, the other SAPI

ThijsFeryn — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 17:13:47 +0000

Most developers use PHP in a web context and run their code via Apache. The command line interface (CLI) is another approach to run PHP without the overhead of your webserver.This talk not only illustrates the usage of the PHP binary, but also some use cases for which the CLI is the better tool. Keywords: I/O, forking, signals, configuration, batch tasks, syntax validation, documentation, piping…

Slides:

cli_the_other_sapi.txt

Schedule info

Status:

Proposed

Session Info

Speaker(s):

ThijsFeryn

Track:

Coding + Development

Featured:

Not Featured

Experience level:

Intermediate

The Old and New Field API in Drupal 8

swentel — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 12:22:42 +0000

Click here to watch The Old and New Field API in Drupal 8.

Drupal 8 has (and is still being) changed significantly under the hood. Field API also got a big overhaul.

In this session we'll cover the API changes with lot's of code examples so you're ready to port your field modules to Drupal 8 or implement the API in custom projects. But that's not all. We'll also show you new and exciting features and talk about how we were able to speed up Field API's rendering system which in the end results in a faster Drupal as well.

And then there's this New Field API. What's the difference with the old one and what's the impact for me as a developer ?

Whether you're a coder or site builder, fields are one of the essential pieces of your Drupal site, so everyone is more than welcome to join!

Schedule info

Status:

Accepted

Time slot:

Wednesday, May 22 - 10:45am-11:45am

Room:

OR 203 - Palantir

Session Info

Speaker(s):

swentel

fago

yched

Track:

Coding + Development

Featured:

Not Featured

Experience level:

Intermediate

Taming Monster Drupal Queries with Akiban

posulliv — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 21:49:23 +0000

Drupal is nearly universally deployed with MySQL as the backend database. We’ve all heard the NoSQL and NewSQL terms thrown around and there are many interesting new database products available. However, deploying these products is difficult and for a Drupal deployment used to running on MySQL, not always an option.

In this talk, we are going to discuss Akiban and how it can be used as a query accelerator in an existing MySQL environment. Akiban can be deployed as a regular MySQL slave so much of your operational knowledge can be put to good use with Akiban. Problematic queries for MySQL are then directed by Drupal to Akiban instead of to MySQL. This is similar to how queries are off-loaded to a read slave with MySQL replication. However, with Akiban, these problematic queries are not just off-loaded, they are usually executed 10-100 times faster.

This talk will first introduce Akiban including how to get it up and running as a MySQL slave. Then we’ll dive into specific examples of problematic queries in various Drupal deployments and how they can be redirected to Akiban. During this portion of the talk, we’ll also discuss actual customer deployments of Akiban for Drupal, including 1 deployment in the Acquia cloud.

Slides:

drupal_akiban.pdf

Schedule info

Status:

Proposed

Session Info

Speaker(s):

posulliv

Track:

Coding + Development

Featured:

Not Featured

Experience level:

Intermediate

Dungeons & Dragons & Drupal: A look at real-world, complex data management problems

tobby — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 04:53:54 +0000

A magical quest through complex record keeping that takes our adventurers from the mighty cities of Features packages through the deep delves of compound fields, facing off against hordes of PDF output.

Just like in Dungeons and Dragons, there are some real-life, complex data management issues that can only be resolved at the CMS level. This session discusses approaching these sorts of complex data management problems using the familiar common ground (D&D).

The D&D Character module for Drupal 7 was released last February, and aside from making the lives of Dungeon Masters and players easier, it's a great example of some really common (and surprisingly business-related) Drupal module functionality. First, it provides a complex node type to allow users to create their characters, with fields organized into logical arrangements. Second, it defines several new, compound fields (using Fields API) to help account for the varieties of complex data such as skills, feats, magical items, and weapons. Finally, it make use of PHP's PDF libraries to create printable character record sheets for a character node, and generating other non-standard output such as OmniGraffle documents.

As any good DM or player knows, managing a PC is extremely complex, involving dozens of steps to create and update a good D&D character. In addition to being a fun D&D-themed session, this presentation will also cover how to deal with complex record keeping systems that can prove useful for government or HR offices. In addition to discussing the inspiration behind the D&D module, I'll explore how similar complex record-keeping requirements can be handled with Drupal and custom fields and content types.

You hear something behind you. Roll for initiative.

Schedule info

Status:

Proposed

Session Info

Speaker(s):

tobby

Track:

Coding + Development

Featured:

Not Featured

Experience level:

Intermediate

How to act like you (maybe actually) care about your work

thejmather — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 05:57:14 +0000

There are many things we, as developers, know we need to do, yet never take the time to focus on. Learning, automation, and how to function as people within a diverse team are all incredibly important topics we need to continually refocus on. Learning how to learn, making time through automation, and playing the people game by getting along with our coworkers will greatly improve our career chances, and goals. I will give you a programmer's tapas on these topics, giving you an appetizer to fuel your thirst and hunger for more.

Schedule info

Status:

Proposed

Session Info

Speaker(s):

thejmather

Track:

Coding + Development

Featured:

Not Featured

Experience level:

Beginner

Yes, you will.

thejmather — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 06:00:06 +0000

There are many things that we avoid learning because we don't think we're going to use them. Well, I'm here to tell you: yes, you will. You will use version control, even if it's saving as file.old.php. You will test, even if it's simply pressing F5. You will practice software deployment, even if it is by transferring individual files via FTP. It's a simple fact. But naming files .old.php, hitting refresh, and using FTP are old and busted. Let's get familiar with some of the proper tools.

Schedule info

Status:

Proposed

Session Info

Speaker(s):

thejmather

Track:

Coding + Development

Featured:

Not Featured

Experience level:

Beginner

Views for Developers; An Architectural Overview

Bevan — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 01:54:15 +0000

Views is an immensely powerful and extensible system. It can be used to solve a wide range of problems and present many different types of displays; More than what most people realise, even after working with Views for considerable time.

This session will demonstrate some advanced but poorly-understood features of Views, such as grouping, "count" and "group by" queries, summary views, non-standard pagers and attached-views.

This session will cover an architectural overview of Views 3's classes, and how to extend it's object-oriented code to present data in alternate formats (the "view" in "MVC"), allow Views to understand and filter data in a specific way (controller) and to access alternate data sources (model).

A demonstration of extending views in code will follow. Attendees should be familiar with building and editing Views, although it is not necessary that they consider themselves "advanced" in this area.

This session will demonstrate some advanced but poorly-understood features of Views, such as grouping, "count" and "group by" queries, summary views, non-standard pagers and attached-views.

For the second code-oriented part of the session, it is also assumed that attendees are familiar with object-oriented terminology and the OO concepts of objects, classes and inheritance.

This session is inspired by Larry Garfield's "Views for Developers" and "Views to the next level" sessions at past DrupalCons and Drupal camps.

This session was presented at DrupalCon Denver. Here are the slides.

Notes for track chairs: This session takes one hour to cover both parts, but 1.5 hours is recommended to dive deeper into code in the second part. The first part can be done alone in 45 minutes. If a code-oriented session is preferred the first part can be done in less time.

I have done this for Drupal 7 in the past but will update material for Drupal 8 if appropriate. I.e. If Drupal 8 and Views are sufficiently stable and documented in time.

Schedule info

Status:

Proposed

Session Info

Speaker(s):

Bevan

Track:

Coding + Development

Experience level:

Advanced

Performance analysis with XHProf

Kars-T — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 14:58:31 +0000

In this Session you will learn about:

Profiling with XHPRof

Installation
Benefits
XHProf VS xDebug
Automatic usage
Profiling small parts of the code
Combination with the devel module
The UI
What "exclusive walltime" is
Diff and average runs
Some examples

The slides can be found here at google docs

Slides:

Xhprof - English.pdf

Schedule info

Status:

Proposed

Session Info

Speaker(s):

Kars-T

Track:

Coding + Development

Experience level:

Beginner