Some of PHP’s main competitors are Perl, Microsoft ASP.NET, JavaServer Pages (JSP), and ColdFusion. In comparison to these products, PHP has many strengths, including the following:
1 High performance
2 Interfaces to many different database systems
3 Built-in libraries for many common web tasks
4 Low cost
5 Ease of learning and use
6 Strong object-oriented support
7 Portability
8 Availability of source code
9 Availability of support
A more detailed discussion of these strengths follows.
Performance
PHP is very efficient. Using a single inexpensive server, you can serve millions of hits per day. If you use large numbers of commodity servers, your capacity is effectively unlimited. Benchmarks published by Zend Technologies (http://www.zend.com) show PHP outperforming its competition.
Database Integration
PHP has native connections available to many database systems. In addition to MySQL, you can directly connect to PostgreSQL, mSQL, Oracle, dbm, FilePro, Hyperwave, Informix, InterBase, and Sybase databases, among others. PHP 5 also has a built-in SQL interface to a flat file, called SQLite. Using the Open Database Connectivity Standard (ODBC), you can connect to any database that provides an ODBC driver.This includes Microsoft products and many others.
Built-in Libraries
Because PHP was designed for use on the Web, it has many built-in functions for performing many useful web-related tasks.You can generate GIF images on the fly, connect to web services and other network services, parse XML, send email, work with cookies, and generate PDF documents, all with just a few lines of code.
Cost
PHP is free.You can download the latest version at any time from http://www.php.net for no charge.
Ease of Learning PHP
The syntax of PHP is based on other programming languages, primarily C and Perl. If you already know C or Perl, or a C-like language such as C++ or Java, you will be productive using PHP almost immediately.
Object-Oriented Support
PHP version 5 has well-designed object-oriented features. If you learned to program in Java or C++, you will find the features (and generally the syntax) that you expect, such as inheritance, private and protected attributes and methods, abstract classes and methods, interfaces, constructors, and destructors.You will even find some less common features such as built-in iteration behavior. Some of this functionality was available in PHP versions 3 and 4, but the object-oriented support in version 5 is much more complete.
Portability
PHP is available for many different operating systems.You can write PHP code on free Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and FreeBSD, commercial Unix versions such as Solaris and IRIX, or on different versions of Microsoft Windows. Well-written code will usually work without modification on a different system running PHP.
Source Code
You have access to PHP’s source code.With PHP, unlike commercial, closed-source products, if you want to modify something or add to the language, you are free to do so. You do not need to wait for the manufacturer to release patches.You also don’t need to worry about the manufacturer going out of business or deciding to stop supporting a product.
Availability of Support
Zend Technologies (www.zend.com), the company behind the engine that powers PHP, funds its PHP development by offering support and related software on a commercial basis.
For next lesson in PHP tutorials for dummies, we will learn about What Is New in PHP 5.0?
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