PHP vs. ASP Essay

Introduction PHP and ASP are the two best web technologies this century is to offer. In their own ways, they have created trust and market for their product and development environment. Anstey (2003) mentions that PHP belongs to a free software community and open source general purpose software which is very easy to use and correct its bugs from the community of developers around the world. ASP is a program that runs on IIS server and is a free component with windows operating system and offers various features (Argence, 2008). ASP.NET is a unified Web development platform that provides services necessary for developers to build enterprise-class Web applications. ASP.NET provides programming model and infrastructure for more secure, scalable, and stable applications. ASP.NET is a compiled, .NET based web environment developed in any .NET compatible languages like Visual Basic .NET, C#, JScript.NET, etc. Additionally, the entire .NET Framework is available to any ASP.NET application. Developers can easily access the benefits of these technologies, which include the managed common language runtime environment, type safety, inheritance, and so on. The foundation of all Web applications is that they deliver dynamic content over a protocol which by model is stateless. Most of the ASP.NET developments fall in client-server architecture programming model. Minimal points to be considered for a typical web application modeled as client-server architecture are given below. User interface and client environment (Page layout). Data verification, transfer and store. Security. Scalability, reliability and availability of the application. Optimized resource utilization and performance. Handling unpleasant instances gracefully. Navigation. Literature review PHP traces back to the development of Perl and C which emerged quite successfully as a result of the contribution of the various programmers around the globe and as a result of its being an open community. The various versions came out successfully through 1997 to 2004 where the features were added and successfully taken up to cater to the development paradigm of the large scale of internet users. ASP came handy with Windows 95 with the features of IIS server installed. It was an established standard which takes into account the various databases into consideration and is based on the COM model. The various differences among PHP and ASP make sure that all to a good extent the feature are compiled and carries enough advantage to understand the loopholes and make sure that all the various utilities are enforced well.   PHP and ASP depict large scale differences in the form of various factors like cost, integration of features, speed, platform compatibility, additional costs, base language, database connectivity and many others. Cost: As PHP is not single handedly owned by any individual or an organization it does not requires to be purchased for use. Even for the support of the backend, it uses a database technology named MySQL which is also available free of cost (DuBois, 2002). The hosting of the PHP pages into the Linux server and their deployment is quite affordable and can be done with ease. Glass (2004) mentions that ASP is synchronized with Microsoft Windows operating system and comes along with it bearing the cost of the operating system. Moreover hosting ASP pages is expensive over the internet and features like email, file uploading and other features are quite expensive at the same time. Integration with operating environments and databases: PHP makes sure that all the operating environments are taken care to its fullest capability and is compatible with Windows, UNIX, Linux, Solaris and others. Its platform dependency format makes sure that all the various compatibility with operating environments makes it quite viable in nature. PHP integrates with the databases like MySQL and others in a great fashion. ASP on the other hand is compatible with Windows only and makes sure that Microsoft oriented databases like MSSQL server would be well integrated with it. For other database platforms it requires to download various libraries and components for integration and workability (Hull, 2002). Performance: PHP is an interpreted language and make sure that the interpreted nature makes it fast for getting the customization done. The memory requirement of the PHP pages is quite optimizable and runs very fast with the greater understanding of the various features. Database connections of PHP are also quite flexible and make sure that all the various database functionality like stability, transactions, replication, triggers and stored procedures are handled quite well (Merrall, 2000). ASP on the other hand is a compiled language and the software glitches are quite often not corrected or take a long time to get it done. The compiled nature makes sure that all the various factors like throughput and response time is quite low for the hosted pages. Its exclusivity with Microsoft windows operating system makes it platform independent with regard to various hosting and access problems. Enhanced capabilities and compatibility: These include file transfer programs and utilities, compression of data, uploading of files, integration of XML an MD5, encryption techniques and email facilities are not included in ASP, even if it does it requires the support of large third party packages installed, which are very easily integrated in PHP. PHP.net (2008) mentions that complex functions like dynamic images, IMAP, SNMP, dynamic flash, PDF, native access to Oracle, Ovrimos, Postgre, Sybase, mSql, MSSQL, Ingres, Interbase and Informix databases, LDAP, and sockets and many others are easily integrated with PHP, however it would create a big problem with its integration with ASP. PHP is compatible with various web servers for its functioning however ASP requires it to be easily integrated with only IIS and PWS as explained by Pires (2005). Conclusion   Although both ASP and PHP are web server end languages for web development, it makes sure that the factors like cost, installation, performance, compatibility issues are economized to its full   extent. PHP offers the best integration of the speed and performance factors and make sure that all the various promises are met for catering to the web development (Zhang, 1999). ASP is most suitable with the Microsoft platform and makes sure that all the features are captured and managed for the various services. References Anstey, Marty (2003). PHP vs ASP. Retrieved 19, February 2008 from http://marty.anstey.ca/programming/php/articles/ Argence d Ricardo (2008). Web Hosting, PHP vs AS.P. Retrieved 18, February 2008 from http://articles.topofhosting.com/web-hosting-php-asp.php DuBois, Paul (2002). MySQL Cookbook. O’Reilly, October 2002. Glass, Michael (2004). Beginning PHP, Apache, MySQL ® Web Development. Wiley Publicizing sons. ISBN: 0-7645-5744-0. Hull, Sean (2002). PHP vs. ASP.NET Redux. Retrieved 18, February 2008 from http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/columns/hull_php2.html Merrall, Graeme (2000). PHP/MySQL Tutorial PHP.net (2008). See: http://www.php.net/manual/en Pires, Halstatt (2005). ASP vs. PHP. Retrieved 18, February 2008 from http://www.webpronews.com/expertarticles/2005/12/22/asp-vs-php Zhang, Ying (1999). Web Database Step-by-Step Guide.