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IBM Backs PHP for Web Development

Posted by Zonk on Fri Feb 25, 2005 10:50 AM
from the echo-"free-languages-equal-profit" dept.
PHP Programming
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 25 Comments More /

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  • Market share (Score:3, Insightful)

    by superpulpsicle (533373) on Friday February 25 2005, @10:53AM (#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, @11:34AM (#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]

    • 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

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

    by same_old_story (833424) on Friday February 25 2005, @10:54AM (#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?
    • 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 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. :-\

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

        by RaisinBread (315323) on Friday February 25 2005, @01:44PM (#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.

            • *SIGH* My point was that for some reason PHP is the only language I've learned that makes a big deal over "Magic Quotes." Either the PHP authors are onto something that it happens nobody else has caught onto after 5+ years (yeah, right) or they have introduced a feature that just confuses everybody and 99% of the time gets turned off anyway.

              How about instead of making coders puzzle over Magic Quotes related issues, we instead make them read an informative article on preventing cross site scripting / SQL injection. "Teach a man to fish..." etc.

              What is so hard to understand about that?
  • "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

  • 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, @11:05AM (#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.]

  • 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.

  • 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, @01:17PM (#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...

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

    by bani (467531) on Friday February 25 2005, @03:14PM (#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.

  • ASP vrs PHP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Spinlock_1977 (777598) <Spinlock_1977@nOSpam.yahoo.com> on Friday February 25 2005, @03:27PM (#11781023) Homepage 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.

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

    by mgkimsal2 (200677) on Friday February 25 2005, @04:18PM (#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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