Mobile Android Development and Using PHP with Web Services

SuperMondays returned to Newcastle on the evening of 22^nd February with an attendance of over 100 people. The attendees came to see 2 speakers, Alex Reid and Lorna Mitchell.

Android Development with Alex Reid
In this session, Alex gave an overview of Mobile Apps, How to write a mobile app, Differences from the web, Mobile device constraints and benefits and Android itself. Alex demonstrated 2 applications which he has already developed for Android including “Ask the Hoff” and “Next Metro”, an application which allows you to see which Metro will arrive next and if it is on time. He explained that to write a mobile application yo have to decide which device(s) to target, get to know an SDK, testing and publishing the app. Later in the session, Alex explained the differences of Mobile to the Web and how efficiency is the key when developing mobile apps.

PHP and Web Services and why they are the perfect partners with Lorna Mitchell
Lorna Mitchell is a big name in the PHP world and community and so needs no introductions. Lorna came to SuperMondays to discuss PHP and Web Services and why they are the perfect partners. During her talk she explained how PHP is solving the web problem, how the problem evolves and how PHP evolves to solve the problem. Lorna showed the architecture of Web Services and how different data formats can be used to communicate with Web Services including JSON and XML. She also discussed different services types which are normally associated with Web Services including *-RPC, SOAP and REST.

Alex's slides can be found here:
http://www.slideshare.net/AlexJReid/development-of-a-mobile-app-for-android

Lorna's slides can be found here:
http://www.slideshare.net/lornajane/php-and-web-services-perfect-partners

Databases at the Bedson

Supermondays returned on 28th September to the Bedson Teaching center in Newcastle. Around 80 people attended to hear three speakers talking about the history of databases, SimpleDB, Google App Engine and RAQUEL.

Ross Cooney from Rozmic stood to the podium first of all, he talked about the history of databases, why they are important and some of the theory behind them including ACID and BASE. He also talked about CAP theorem and distributed databases.

David Lavery was up next, David talked about Amazon's web service SimpleDB database product and Google App Engine.

David Livingstone from Northumbria university was the last speaker of the evening. He talked about and put forward a new database product called RAQUEL (Relational, Algebra, Query, Update, Executive Language) being developed at the university and how it is lego like in nature as it can use plugins and modules.