The Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) team, announced today the release of Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP, a PHP performance optimizer/accelerator created to increase the speed of PHP applications running on Windows and Windows Server.

This is a production-ready release that is provided under an open source BSD license, with the source code hosted and maintained here, and the documentation hosted on php.net.

You can find more details on this release on IIS team Product Unit Manager Mai-lan Tomsen Bukovec’s blog.

WinCache extension is a significant open source contribution from Microsoft to the PHP on Windows community. The extension code is hosted and maintained on PHP Extensions Community Library (PECL) and is available for everyone to view, branch, compile, and contribute to.

The IIS team also invites the PHP development community to join it in development of this caching extension for PHP on Windows. There have already been some contributions from the community whileWinCache was in the pre-release mode, and IIS team is looking forward to having others join this new PHP on Windows caching project.

Also, in time for this release, an independent PHP company – Ibuildings – has conducted a benchmark test with the WinCache RTW bits and published the results.

The release of this production-ready PHP accelerator for Windows is an important step towards making the Windows operating system an even better platform for hosting PHP applications.

WinCache extension significantly improves performance of PHP applications and lowers CPU load on the server. This, together with the fact that no application code changes are necessary to take advantage of the caching, makes WinCache a must have extension when running PHP on Windows.

More information about the WinCache extension for PHP can be found as follows:

• The PECL documentation on WinCache
• The PHP on Windows feature team blogs (Kanwal, Ruslan, and Don)
• The WinCache community forum
• The IIS.NET documentation on WinCache
• The WinCache on PECL source code, licensed under BSD
• How to file bugs on WinCache in PECL

Source: Port 25

ASP.NET MVC 2.0 Preview 2 has been released today and you can now count on:

• Client-Side Validation – ASP.NET MVC 2 includes the jQuery validation library to provide client-side validation based on the model’s validation metadata. It is possible to hook in alternative client-side validation libraries by writing an adapter which adapts the client library to the JSON metadata in a manner similar to the xVal validation framework.
• Areas – Preview 2 includes in-the-box support for single project areas for developers who wish to organize their application without requiring multiple projects. Registration of areas has also been streamlined.
• Model Validation Providers – allow hooking in alternative validation logic to provide validation when model binding. The default validation providers uses Data Annotations.
• Metadata Providers – allow hooking in alternative sources of metadata for model objects. The default metadata provider uses Data Annotations.”

Download ASP.NET MVC 2.0 Preview 2 here.

I am hereby apologizing for any site availability issues. I’ve requested a server update that is taking too much time, and the end of this novel is completely out of my control.