PHP is a scripting
language written for professional web developers,
it provides many of the programming tools a web
developer could wish for ... all in a single,
free, cross-platform, open-source package. PHP
enables you to build highly interactive, dynamic,
e-commerce web sites using server-side scripting
techniques similar to and better than those offered
by Microsoft's ASP (Active Server Pages) and Sun
Microsystems' JSP (Java Server Pages). |
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PHP scripts run on the web server,
they avoid most of the incompatibility and maintenance
costs associated with client-side (browser-based) approaches
to interactivity.
PHP is today's fastest-growing technology
for dynamic Web pages. According to the authoritative
Netcraft survey of what technology is actually in use
on the Web, PHP can now be found on more that 6 million
domains, and is growing at a rate of up to 15% each
month. PHP is available on over 36% of Apache Web servers
– the most common server on the Web. The latest
version of PHP, PHP 4, was downloaded 265,000 separate
times in the first two months it was available. With
the open-source trend gaining popularity, PHP is expected
to continue to pick up momentum.
On the other hand, PHP scripts can
be more efficient and portable than some other server-side
approaches (including traditional CGI programs), e.g.
PHP scripts developed for MS Windows 2000, SQL Server
and the IIS web server, can be deployed easily and profitably
on robust enterprise class Unix systems running the
Apache web server and Oracle. In short, PHP enables
cross-platform, vendor-neutral solutions, which can
be built and deployed on any popular web architecture.
PHP provides a wealth of tools for
interacting with, transferring and transforming data
stored in any number of ways, e.g. it can handle plain
text, HTML, XML, XSLT, Postcript, PDF, ODBC, SQL, most
RDBMs, encrypted authentication, secure sockets (SSL)
and many other secure transaction procedures.
As an open source product, PHP enjoys
the support of a large group of open-source developers.
The community gives excellent technical support to users,
and bugs are found and repaired quickly. The code is
continuously updated with improvements and language
extensions to expand PHP's capabilities.
PHP offers excellent connectivity to
most of the common databases (including Oracle, Sybase,
MySQL, ODBC and many others), and offers integration
with various external libraries, which allow the developer
to do anything from generating PDF documents to parsing
XML. Another key advantage of PHP, when compared to
other scripting languages such as ASP or ColdFusion,
is that it is open-source and cross-platform, suitable
for today's heterogeneous network environments.
Get Ready for the Internet Based Application Revolution
Chances are the best framework for
the task at hand is going to depend largely on what
tools you already have available. One of the great benefits
of Web apps is that they are platform independent, so
you can use what's easiest. If you look around the server
room and see dozens of machines running various flavors
of Windows 2000, and your development team is itching
for an excuse to use .NET, your path is clear. Likewise,
if your IT department is staffed with die-hard UNIX/Linux
users who would never even consider .NET, you might
want to look at using Java, C++, or Python as alternatives.
As mentioned earlier, it's even possible to create an
application framework in a scripting language such as
PHP, something which is even more robust than .NET for
rolling out Web application to Fortune 500 customers
in coming month.
For more information Please visit the PHP official
website http://www.php.net
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