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PHP Programming

IBM Backs PHP for Web Development 111

Posted by Zonk from the echo-"free-languages-equal-profit" dept.
Christopher Reimer writes "C|Net is reporting that IBM will be getting behind the open-source language PHP for its WebSphere server software and tools. From the article: 'Big Blue's public commitment to PHP is significant because the company has the technical and marketing resources to accelerate usage of the open-source product.'" Evidently PHP is indeed becoming more popular.
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IBM Backs PHP for Web Development More

IBM Backs PHP for Web Development

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  • Market share (Score:3, Insightful)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @11:53AM (#11777655)
    Anyone know what market share Websphere really has in relation to say... Apache or IIS. I have seen a number of IBM shops, none of them use Websphere. Is it really just a coincidence.

    • That's compaing apples and oranges, Websphere is NOT a http server like Apache or IIS (in fact if I'm remebering correctly it uses Apache as its http server) it is an application server, the closest analog in OSS would be Tomcat.

      • Re:Market share (Score:4, Informative)

        by Eric Giguere ( 42863 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @12:34PM (#11778164) Homepage Journal

        the closest analog in OSS would be Tomcat

        The closest open source analog would be JBoss. Tomcat isn't really an application server, either, at least not the way the term is used conventionally in the industry. (It is kind of fuzzy, though.) Tomcat is a servlet container [apache.org]. A servlet container is a necessary (but not sufficient) part of a J2EE application server, but Tomcat by itself is not a J2EE application server. See my other posting for better things to compare WebSphere to.

        Eric

    • Wrong market. WebSphere is an application server, not a web server. Yes, it has a web server included with it, but that's not its raison d'etre. You'd be better off comparing it to BEA's WebLogic Server [bea.com] or to the open source JBoss Application Server [jboss.org] or the free Sun Java System Application Server [sun.com].

      In terms of market share, the last nubmers I saw had WebSphere first, with WebLogic close behind.

      Eric
      J2ME programming overviews and stuff [ericgiguere.com]

      • Long as we're throwing out links, let's bring up my personal favorite, Resin [caucho.com] (now licensed under GPL!). The GPL version doesn't have any clustering support, but that's it. You can even get the full source for the commercial version, and that full version is still free-beer for any noncommercial usage.

        But aside from the license stuff, it's lean, reasonably featureful for 80% of commonly-used features (if you really need lots of features, stick with jboss), and boy howdy it's fast. It's nice to have not o
    • I've moving into WebSphere (WS) as a system architect later this week (new job, wo-ha!). The impression I got is that it's VERY popular, just that WS Application Server (WSAS) is middleware, and you can really run WSAS with Apache or IIS as front-end if you really want to.

      WS is as straitforward as .NET, i.e. not at all; it's both a product, and a concept (i.e. marketspeek). The WSAS is the product, and WS the marketspeek is a load of crap.

      Personally I would rather see a Boo solution, it would more elegant
      • Personally I would rather see a Boo solution, it would more elegant than anything on the market, it it will never make it though for the same reasons PHP is so successful; which as nothing to do with being a really good product (like most success stories).

        I guess that really depends on how you define a "good product"...or more to the point, from which perspective you define a good product.
    • Websphere isn't just a web server. There are several parts, some of which can be used standalone, like the MQ Queue Manager.

      There are very few products as robust at message delivery and which run on Linux, DOS, OS/2, big iron, OpenVMS, Z/OS, and all flavors of Unix.

    • I have seen a number of IBM shops, none of them use Websphere. Is it really just a coincidence.

      Having worked with websphere, I would say no, its not a coincidence.

      Although this was 5 years ago.
    • In addition to the http server clarifications above, it's important to note that "WebSphere" is not a product - it is a brand. There are tons of software products that belong to the WebSphere brand like Application Developer, Application Server, MQ, etc.

      That said, typically when people refer to "WebSphere" like in this case, they mean "WebSphere Application Server" or "WAS".

  • how about python? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by same_old_story ( 833424 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @11:54AM (#11777662)
    I stuble across many articles on ibm developers network about python. seems like a lot of ibm hackers like it, but I never see the big blue showing any corporate support.
    is this a 'we do not want to upset java' thing, or is python imature for hard core web programming?

    • Re:how about python? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by afd8856 ( 700296 )
      I'd say, with zope, webware, quixote, twisted and many many others, there's a bit too much in the python web world. What it lacks is a "definitive" web framework.

      Of course, for me the answer it's simple (zope), but it's not an easy solution and it's more involved. Zope is an application server: you get an OO data storage, an API to develop applications for it, catalog services (search), portal toolkit - CMF (membership, workflow, etc), and even a full portal system, with plone.

      Php has the advantage of bei

      • Re:how about python? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Zope is basically the Lotus Domino for the 21st century. Makes easy things easy, hard things impossible, and ties it all together in a non-interoperable, proprietary, environment-specifc mess that will be impossible to migrate when the time comes. So it would be just the perfect thing for IBM to foist on customers.
  • In all seriousness: is there a significant advantage to using PHP?
    Can we say it readily supports simple things in a (subjectively) more obvious way than <alternative>?
    • The advantage PHP has is simple: there are huge numbers of C/C++ coders who would find it easier to learn and use PHP than Perl/CGI, Java or ASP.Net.

      And its lack of structure is attractive to many as many sites simple do not have a formal object-based structure.

      It's simple, and it works. And that's what mainly matters anymore, especially with tightening budgets for web sites.
      • I agree, my experience with the 2 languages is that Java coders will often spend alot of time worrying about complex frameworks, instead of building a few simple easy dynamic web pages. Its not always the best thing to build websites with, just don't tell a Java developer that.

    • Re:Power? Performance? Ease of Use? (Score:5, Funny)

      by cyranoVR ( 518628 ) * <cyranoVR&gmail,com> on Friday February 25, 2005 @12:18PM (#11777967) Homepage Journal
      I have to ask the same question. It seems to me that PHP gained popularity as an *nix/c-Syntax alternative to Microsoft's ASP. Like ASP - quick, dirty, cheap, and not-compiled. But for all its faults, ASP at least had Option Explicit [google.com].

      However, the language seems lend itself to a lot coding flaws - explicitly defined variables, variables that can do quadruple duty as scalars, arrays, maps and references with no visual cue as to what they're for, abuse of global variables, no standard library resulting in 5+ functions that do the same thing - that result in unreadable, obtuse and convoluted code.

      (Before somebody flames me about such things being a matter of "taste" - there are academic studies out there regarding human comprehension of coding styles [umassd.edu]. These things are quantifiable. That's why it's called Computer Science - not Computer Art)

      Yes, bad progammers can make even the best language suck, but PHP really gives you free reign to be more sloppy than most [thephpwtf.com]. Yeah, a lot of php apps look slick (phpNuke, phpAdmin, etc) but under the hood they're a mess. :-\
      • Except there is a standard library [php.net]. It might not be complete enough for you (and some bits aren't compiled by default), but it's definitely a standard group of functions included in the distribution.

        The documentation I just linked to is probably one of the biggest reasons for PHP's success. It's comprehensive, provides a good overview, and lets you easily dip in to find what you need. It makes it easy for amateurs to write simple PHP. (Admittedly with a whole load of coding errors, but they can improve
        • I'd also hardly say that no visual cue for what type a variable is represents a serious issue. It wasn't mentioned in that article you linked to, either. What makes it an issue is the easy and automatic typecasting, and lack of a decent structure in most php.

          Erm I didn't link to an "article." I linked to a bibliography - list of the many volumes of research that have been done in the last 20+ years to build empirical evidence for code reading and comprehension. There has been a lot of scientific research
          • Look, this is Slashdot, any link is "an article". :-)

            I was just saying that there's nothing in the bibliography that seems to mention the value of variable-type naming conventions. I'm very lazy, and don't want to track down and read all those papers, so I don't know if any of them touched on the issue.

            Your complaint with PHP seems to be, as other respondants have said, that you see a lot of crappy code written in it. I'd argue that this is not a function of the language, but of the type of people who w
        • i love the php documentation and i'd love to know what package they're using to drive it (not the language, obviously php). some kind of custom documentation-wiki or something.

          i wish they'd share :)
      • That thephpwtf site is great amusement, but I fail to see how 99% of that code is a result of the language. It's just as easy to write 5 page switch() statements, call external scripts written in other languages to do even the most mundane task that the language already has built in, or do things like "if ($I1[(int)0==4]===$lI||(int)4==0)" in C++. The remaining 1% of stupid code seems to be the result of PHP's loose type casting mechanism.

        In other words, stupid is as stupid codes.

        I suppose next they'll pu

      • Re:Power? Performance? Ease of Use? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by RaisinBread ( 315323 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @02:44PM (#11779920) Homepage
        After moving away from Java, I couldn't be more pleased with the flexibility in PHP for web development and even shell script replacement.

        It's concise (none of this System.out.println.pretty.please() funny business), the documentation is stellar, it plays nice with many different technologies, and I don't have to objectify and type-cast anything I don't want to. PHP 5 has all the object love and forced typing I need - and the great part about it is that its there if I need it. PHP also has a extension repository PEAR [php.net], and a slick templating engine, Smarty. [php.net]

        Sure, it 'lends itself to coding flaws', but it also lends itself to flexible web development and very quick development cycles.

        Just because you put your code monkeys in front of Visual Studio or Eclipse *does not make the code any cleaner.* You can't force people to write clean code (which IMHO is an art). More 'structured' languages might even cause dummies to write even more workaround code. And while OOP is really great, I've seen folks who objectify projects into oblivion.

        Don't buy in on broad-generalizations like the parent and check PHP out. PHP is on the up, and IBM (along with many others) are noticing.

        • Smarty might be "slick", but it has a real weakness in not being XML based, like this templating engine [xaraya.com].

        • For the last several years I have been developing
          web apps with java. I have experience with
          everything from ATG Dynamo, Tomcat, Struts,
          Spring Framework, etc.

          It is long story but I coded and host a few apache/java websites for friends/family from my
          house. Recently, I wanted to move these to
          commercially hosted sites. While I could find
          a number of tomcat hosts the cost seemed to be
          roughly twice that of php hosting. Furthermore,
          I just didn't feel good turning over java apps
          that I knew would be more complex/
          • Are PHP's image manipulating functions good enough for a professional site? I remember playing with a test site a while back and being less then impressed with the image quality. I'm now using a product from efflare, imageCR, along with ColdFusion. The quality is phenomenal, many of the images that are just resized or thumbnailed honistly look better then what comes out of photoshop. No jagged line, etc... If I move to php, will I need another third part product?
        • It's concise (none of this System.out.println.pretty.please() funny business),

          Everyone always uses System.out.println() as the example...

          However, System.out.println is rarely used in production code! Most output is going to go to Swing textboxes or pushed to a browser in JSP pages. Huh?

          If it's really such a hassle, just add this static function to your HelloWorld class.

          static void print(String msg) {
          System.out.println(msg);
          }

          And for input, Java 1.5 now has java.util.Scanner /me shrugs

          • you shouldnt have to do that stuff just to get something usable.

            php is usable out of the box, integrates nicely out of the box with oh just about anything you can imagine. with java you have to shore it up with bailing wire and bubblegum before its usable.

            its quite simple, people find themselves far more productive in php than java. doesnt matter how semantically perfect the language is if it takes you 3 times as long to do something in java as it does in php.
            • php is usable out of the box, integrates nicely out of the box with oh just about anything you can imagine. with java you have to shore it up with bailing wire and bubblegum before its usable.

              I call bullshit. PHP is nowhere near as complete a development platform as Java.

              its quite simple, people find themselves far more productive in php than java. doesnt matter how semantically perfect the language is if it takes you 3 times as long to do something in java as it does in php.

              Yes, PHP is better for pro
              • Yes, PHP is better for prototyping because you can create something faster. But have you ever worked on a PHP application that has been around for a few years? PHP applications rapidly become maintenance nightmares after a few hands work on them. Java can be that way too, but the language 'semantic perfection' makes maintanable code a bit more natural. In the long run that translates to lower costs over the life of the project.

                What he said :)
        • I am sorry, but I don't understand your reasoning.
          When fulfilling a set of requirements, a developer starts with analyzing his/her problem domain, breaks down the problem into areas, enters an iterative process of devising an architecture and finally starts the technology selection process. The technologies chosen are the ones which under the circumstance are most likely to solve the outlined problems within current constraints (money/time/skills). For example, using a relational database for structured dat
        • I like PHP also. It is fast and fun(!) to develop with. Things come together quickly... However that is also part of the problem. The barrier to entry is so low that it suffers from the dentist syndrome (what do you call someone who couldn't make it through med school? A dentist.. What do you call a web developer who couldn't hack it with J2EE? A PHP programmer) I've seen so much brain-dead PHP code from kids straight out of college, I have come to believe that it isn't the appropriate choice for la
        • I'm curious, why you use System.out.println() in a web application? I can't think of any need for that other than debuging and for that are much better alternatives, like logging with log4j.
      • Sadly, you are 100% wrong! You believe, and I am sure you have been taught "Computing Science" a vast ammount of unsubstantiated junk about programming languages and development methodologies by a bunch of Academics, most of whom write 20 line programs. In the worst case 3 line programs, 2 of which were actually written by someone else. As someone who has spent most of my working life programming, from age 16 on the EDSAC II, let me let you into a little secret: The number of bugs in code exceeds O(n^2)
        • But Donald Knuth is probably the ultimate Comp Sci academic and he wrote TeX [amazon.com]. I've had more than one self-taught "hackers" tell me that his books on Programming are the only "real" books on the subject.

          Finally, the shorter a program is, the more comprehensible it is!

          You must be a perl coder :)

          I love that part in Learning Perl where the author asserts that *theoretically* every program could be reduced to a single line of code.
    • Do you ever try things before you post? PHP is really useful unless you you work for a major consultancy with a vested interest in increasing the time it takes to code anything.

      Perl and PHP enable you to do simple things simply

      eg PERL;

      print "Hello World\n";

      see the same thing in Java!

      Believe me, PHP is really useful, particularly for generating dynamic HTML.

  • "PHP, Perl and Python have been around for several years and their use appears to be growing"

    I mean, come on. Several years/i??
    Perl has been around since '87
    • I mean, come on. Several years/i?? Perl has been around since '87

      PHP/FI, the first version of what was to be PHP, was release in 1995 (the same year that Java was first released), so it's been around for a decade now. You may be comforted to know that PHP was originally written in Perl.

  • Net.Data (Score:2, Informative)

    by Xunker ( 6905 )
    For those who ever used it, it looks as though IBM is taking on PHP as a replacement for its old web language "Net.Data [ibm.com]".

  • What had "Websphere" been using? Java exclusively? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mosel-saar-ruwer ( 732341 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @12:05PM (#11777796)

    I've never programmed for "Websphere" before, but I had always thought that it was part of IBM's big [massive?] "Java as Middleware" initiative - a few years back, they were putting some serious muscle into marketing multi-million dollar AS400 boxen to compete in that arena [systems that, for all intents and purposes, were really more mainframe-ish than boxen-ish].

    Is the gist of this news item that IBM is abandoning Java for PHP? [And yes, I did skim TFA.]

    • Is the gist of this news item that IBM is abandoning Java for PHP?

      No, it sounds like they just want to support a scripting language for use in the application server and the Groovy [jcp.org] standardization process (of which they're a part) is probably going too slowly for their liking.

      Eric
    • What had "Websphere" been using? Java exclusively?

      Websphere is a full application server stack. One part of that happens to be the "IBM HTTP Listener", which is Apache repackaged. It is also a straightforward way to run Apache with a working SSL implementation on Windows. I used it a few years ago to run a PHP site on W2K. It worked pretty well and problems were actively addressed on IBM's support forums.

      It was a good experience overall. If I ever have to run a PHP site on Windows again (as opposed
  • Why doesn't IBM just buy out Zend? Actually, perhaps Novell should?

    I suppose there is the question of how much money Zend actually makes, but I would think that the steering power and recognition might be well worth it.
    • Why doesn't IBM just buy out Zend? Actually, perhaps Novell should?

      I suppose there is the question of how much money Zend actually makes, but I would think that the steering power and recognition might be well worth it.


      Just what IBM needs -- the power and recognition of Zend.

  • The term "Websphere" could mean alot of different things. It is IBM's branding for all of their middleware and web related products:

    • Websphere Application Server(WAS)
      This is their J2EE application server. It plays in the sam space as BEA's WebLogic App Server, JBoss, etc. It's the cornerstone of their Websphere line and comes in many sizes and flavors, running on anything from a single server, to clusters of servers, to minis, to the Mainframe.
    • Websphere Studio Application Developer(WSAD)
      This is their primary J2EE development tool. It's built around the Eclipse framework IBM developed and released to open source, so their are also tons and tons of other tools that plugin to WSAD.
    • Websphere Portal Server(WPS)
      A portal and colaboration server built on top of WAS. WPS also includes a lot of the technologies that grew out of their Domino platform.
    • Websphere MQ
      IBM's Message Oriented Middleware foundation. (Formerly MQSeries)
    • Websphere Business Integration
      EAI
    • Websphere Commerce Server
      B2C
    • Websphere Everyplace
      mobile connectivity

    ... and on and on for about a hundred products. One of the few products not branded "Websphere" is their web server, an Apache distro, called simply "IBM HTTPD" or "IBM HTTP Server".

  • What about Domino (Score:3, Informative)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @02:17PM (#11779586) Homepage
    I've seen plenty of sites running on Lotus Domino, for example symantec. Domino can run java programs, not particularly applets and beans... but is a snappier version of websphere focused on mail and calendars. Since it has strong support for sessions, using PHP with it makes lots of sense.

    Otherwise we'd have to resort to installing websphere over domino (connector) and then using php in websphere. To run the whole thing we'd probably need one of the Sun dual-Athlon64 servers...
  • JCP for scripiting languages is becoming part of java so web apps can be created using PHP but still use all other parts of J2EE. http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=223 Could be why they are supporting it now, will right right out of the box on their app server.

  • PHP's success (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bani ( 467531 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @04:14PM (#11780923)
    every time PHP (or mysql) comes up, the trolls come out from under their rocks and whine how "php sux","mysql sux" and "java rulez","postgresql rulez" -- ranting about how you'd have to be a complete fuckwit to use php or mysql. they rant about how mysql isnt a "true relational db" or how php isn't "truly oo" blabla yaddayadda, etc. etc. and how postgresql's stored procedures will bring world peace and end world hunger.

    but they are always completely missing the point.

    instead of ranting about why postgresql and java are "better" than mysql or php, they should be focusing on why php and mysql are more widely used than postgresql and java.

    if they focused on those issues instead of language elitism and semantic perfection, then maybe java and postgresql would be more popular.
    • I've used both extensively.
      Apples to oranges comparison on both the languages and the databases.

      Pick the right tool for the job, they both have strengths and weeknesses.
    • Maybe if Nightwish focused less on culture elitism and music perfection, and more on why Britney Spears is much more popular... oh... wait =/
    • As someone who uses all of:

      C, C#, C++, Java, Perl & PHP ..

      Oracle, MySql, Postgress, Sybase, and not to forget the SleepyCat Berleley DB (incorporated in MySql) ...

      what the trolls need to do is go back to Hogwarts remedial school for Trolls, mandated by the "No Trolls left behind Act".

    • Well, I think mysql is used more than postgresql mostly because it was first to become widely distributed. In terms of end use there really isn't all that much difference between the two except maybe postgresql has a bit more support for what people consider to be standard relational features.

      One thing to consider when you choose either is what the upgrade path might be. Mysql maps reasonably well to Microsoft SQL server, while postgresql maps better to Oracle.

      As far as Java vs. PHP goes, I think that the

    • ranting about how you'd have to be a complete fuckwit to use php or mysql

      With modern GUIs, installation is foolproof!

  • ASP vrs PHP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Spinlock_1977 ( 777598 ) <Spinlock_1977@yah[ ]com ['oo.' in gap]> on Friday February 25, 2005 @04:27PM (#11781023) Journal
    I've written applications in both - and here's a difference no one talks about. When you open up MS's ASP environment, all that great GUI stuff is there and it's pretty easy to get going. Then as often happens in a development environment, you need a quick script to munge a long list of field names. Is ASP your first choice? It wasn't mine, because I couldn't find a way to get input into/out of it from the command line. So I whipped up a temporary web page with a text box to do it. More overhead than I wanted to spend for what should be a 2 minute job given an editor with macro key abilities.

    Then a couple of years later I built my first app in PHP. The first thing I noticed was how easy it was to script from the command line. Since I'm not a perl junkie, it was real useful for small scripting jobs. I'd use a shell language for this, but fankly, I'd rather poke a fork in my eyes.

    The next thing I noticed in PHP was I needed an modern editor (the free download doesn't come with an IDE), so I bought one from zend.com for a couple of hundred bucks. It's getting better, but like ASP, it too has no macro key ability (maybe I'm wrong and someone will tell me?), and other nits I'd pick given the chance.

    But the big discovery in PHP was that all my ASP data-type problems magically went away. Hours and freaking hours I spent debugging situations where an int was returned from a DLL and ASP string'ed it, or vice versa. There were byref/byval issues I recall as well. We had to build test local harnesses for all our middle tier ASP components because these problems rendered ASP too lame for a debugging platform.

    But my original point is really that PHP is useful along a continium of the problem space. Need a quick script? Need a nightly job that cleans up your app? Need web pages? PHP works well for all. ASP, from my experience, hits one for three.

    • You don't need to buy an editor in the OS world, if you run on a windowd box, install 'cygwin'.

      Then, depending on how you OWN head works use 'vi', 'emacs' or 'xeamcs' or 'nedit';

      they are all free and almost never go wrong, finally, if you are an aged traditionallist you can still find teco or Bill Joy's vi, (now called nvi).

      • I initially tried writing PHP in emacs, which I use on Unix systems anyway. But after using ASP for a couple of years, my head got pretty addicted to two features: syntax color coding, and auto-complete. These rather modern features make the code (much) easier to read, and reduce typing and typos rather significantly. Why they never put in macro key abilities I'll never figure out.

        Exepting vi (which I'm pretty sure has neither feature), I haven't used the other editors you mentioned - but thanks for th

    • I've developed "Classic ASP" and PHP apps, mostly the former. If you're running Windows and need a great editor, give UltraEdit a whirl. I've used it for 8 years and have found it to be the coolest text/hex editor on the Windows platform. It's fast and cheap, supports macros, etc.

      I've got no ties to the UltraEdit folks except as a highly satisfied user.

      Classic ASP has a lot of problems; I'm in the midst of a transition to .Net for most projects for Windows clients. I'm delving back into PHP (5 is promi

  • So when do we get XPCOM bindings for PHP?

  • Best quote from article (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mgkimsal2 ( 200677 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @05:18PM (#11781686) Homepage
    One industry executive who requested not to be named said that IBM's push into PHP and scripting reflects IBM's disillusionment with the Java standardization process and the industry's inability to make Java very easy to use.

    "IBM's been so fed up with Java that they've been looking for alternatives for years," the executive said. "They want people to build applications quickly that tap into IBM back-ends...and with Java, it just isn't happening."

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