PHP vs. Other Scripting Languages For those who
PHP vs. Other Scripting Languages For those who have migrated from other scripting languages, we have detailed a section on why you just made the right choice. PHP vs. ASP ASP (Active Server Pages) is Microsoft’s proprietary scripting “language”. Loosely speaking, ASP isn’t a language, but a scripting extension of Visual Basic. For this reason, ASP is relatively easy to pick up for anyone who is familiar with Visual Basic. Disadvantages? For one, ASP is generally slower than PHP. ASP is a fundamental user of COM-based architecture. So, when an ASP programmer accesses the database and writes to the client, they’re calling upon the COM strictures of another NT service or an OS layer to assist. This COM overhead can add up and results in average performance for anything more than medium-traffic simple page delivery. Also, ASP isn’t exactly ready to port and integrate with GNU tools and open source environments or servers. Since it’s a proprietary system of Microsoft, it is mostly used on their Internet Information Server (IIS), which limits common adoption of ASP to Windows 32 bit systems where it comes as a free piece of code to most server customers. There are versions for UNIX (see ChilliSoft ASP) and several ASP interpreters for other systems and web servers, but the cost, together with performance, then becomes a concern. A solution to this problem might be to use the asp2phpprogram (http://asp2php.naken.cc/), which will convert ASP to PHP. ASP.NET is a very different animal though. The future may bring some highly significant performance and scaling improvements in ASP. This is achieved by a further leverage of the .NET/COM architecture and management environment. However, the real advantages may only be available to those that spend heavily on various associated servers. PHP vs. Cold Fusion PHP runs on virtually every platform; Cold Fusion is only available on Win32, Solaris, Linux, and HP/UX. PHP initially requires more programming knowledge in contrast with Cold Fusion, which has a refined IDE and simpler language constructs. PHP is less resource intensive. PHP vs. Perl Since PHP was designed specifically for the Web, it has the upper hand on Perl in this area, since Perl was designed for myriad applications (and consequently looks the part). The format and syntax of Perl can make a Perl script hard to read and modify later when updates are needed. Though Perl has been around for quite some time (it was developed in the late 1980s), and is widely supported, it has grown into a complex structure of additions and extensions and is simply just too much. PHP has a less confusing format without losing its flexible nature. PHP is easier to integrate into existing HTML and offers similar functionality to Perl, but with so much more grace. PHP vs. Java PHP is simpler to use than Java and makes it easier to architect web applications while also gaining similar advantages of flexibility and scalability. Using PHP doesn’t require 5 years of software engineering experience to create simple, dynamic pages and can be used by savvy, but inexperienced, computer programmers. Java is often expensive too, as most companies end up having a stand alone box to run Java Enterprise and use Oracle and other expensive software. Having said all that, PHP still has to grow and in that it’s not as portable or doesn’t have some of the nice features like object pooling or database mapping as in Java. These issues are being addressed in the Zend 2.0 engine design considerations. Page 21
Note: If you are looking for inexpensive but high quality provider to host and run your jsp application check Astra jsp hosting services