After reading about distributed database solutions and watching the entire NOSQL movement I had to figure out a way to start building something on a distributed database system. While I only needed one server to get started on (i.e. I didn’t need multiple database nodes right away), I already have a couple projects that are breaking from the old MySQL replication plus Memcached problems (effectively articulated here). In other words, it’s becoming a pain in the butt to maintain the system so I decided to dive in. Here’s how I first got setup.
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On the heel’s of Facebook’s announcement of HipHop for PHP — their “source code transformer” of the PHP scripting language which many Facebook applications are built upon — comes XHP, an extension to inline XML. The full impact of using XHP is still to be determined, Facebook’s Marcel Laverdet says that this makes “front-end code easier to understand” and helps “avoid cross-site scripting attacks.”
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Over the past couple days, MySpace has been communicating with developers about a couple of issues. The first issue was the creation of a new tool that enables developers to run Flash files within applications. Rather than hosting the files on their own servers, developers must upload flash files to MySpace’s servers using the form pictured below:

This new model provides developers with script access while still protecting MySpace from harmful external scripts. Check out the MySpace post for more details. The second announcement made by MySpace is the introduction of an oAuth Tool which assists developers in constructing properly formatted query strings.

The new oAuth tool “allows developers to generate a Base string and a Signature along with request querystring, so that they can compare what a valid request looks like to what they’re own servers are producing for server-to-server RESTful API calls.” I’m sure that this tool will help resolve confusion for many of the developers that were facing challenges with creating proper HTTP requests.

A screen shot of the new tool is displayed below. If you’d like to learn more about the updates, go check out the MySpace developer blogs.