Article - PHP versus ASP Programming

PHP (Hypertext-Pre-Processor) and ASP.NET (Active Server Pages with the .NET Framework) are the two main scripting languages used by web developers. PHP is a multi-platform open-source language whilst ASP.NET is a single platform language built and owned by Microsoft. Both of these languages are packed full of features and add-ons for both are available so that you are able to extend their framework to build feature rich applications.

Since PHP is open source, it has a large active community which is there to support users of the language; ASP.NET is a product of Microsoft meaning that there is a large amount of online documentation and other community forums where you can get support, however since all of this is governed and moderated by Microsoft, the community plays a much smaller and less significant role in the development of the platform.

In June 2002, PHP overtook ASP to become the first Open Source project to start from behind, and become more popular than the bespoke Microsoft solution. With IIS (Microsoft's web server) going into decline versus Apache (PHP's web server) as a result of the Apache 2.0 release and IIS's poor security record, the gap will only widen.

The .NET framework has only one real edge over PHP, which has yet to make itself apparent: with .NET, you can write an application that will run natively on Windows clients and is delivered from a Website. Microsoft has a long way to go with security before it will be able to unleash that on the Internet -- and even when that time comes, browsers and content delivery may be sufficiently advanced to make it irrelevant.

PHP is successful in its own right and in fact is in no way "threatened" by .NET. As to why, your guess is as good as ours, but top of the list might be:

• its down-to-earth approach to problem solving (PHP has without doubt introduced to programming people who would never have thought themselves capable before),
• its active and inspired community,
• its comprehensive and efficient documentation and
• the freedom which developer's have, in terms of choice of code architecture, to do with PHP as you please.

Microsoft would do well to learn some lessons here. Creating PHP.NET as a part of the .NET framework would be a start but at the moment Microsoft seems to be ignoring the Internet's #1 scripting language.

The above details some programming differences between ASP.NET and PHP, however at the end of the day you as a client need to ask yourself:  How hard is it to get programmers who work in this language? What are the licensing issues? Will development on this platform maintain the security of my enterprise? Will it weaken the security of other infrastructures? Will the servers be cost-effective to maintain? What type of uptime can I expect?
The bottom line is with the release of PHP 5 (in 2004 with PHP 6 due anytime now), PHP is a more appealing technology than ever, offering extensive object-oriented features for building large, sophisticated Web-based applications, with the efficiency of a tool that will get the job done. What's more, you have as your Web servers solid, reliable Linux-based servers running Apache to bring you performance and unmatched uptime.