Scripting Nick Ackmann

Which language do I need? Who is maintaining the site? What are their skills and resources? Who is hosting? What scripting tools do you support? What database is going to be used? What drivers are available? What platforms?

Factors in choosing scripting language Operating systems supported Database Main language used Web server

Operating system Pre-purchased: No choice already owned New setup: Experience, budget, and needs

Databases Access DB2 FileMaker MSSQL MySQL Oracle PostgreSQL Sybase

Access Microsoft's low-end database Not used for serious web development Main benefit is easy to create simple DBs without knowing anything about databases

IBM’s DB2 v8.1 Platform: PC OS: AIX, Linux, HP-UX, Sun, and Windows Purchase most versions: $400-$1000 Large amount of users (depending on edition purchased) e-business, Business intelligence, Content, management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management automation capabilities including self-configuring, self- optimizing and self-managing capabilities Competes with Oracle

Filemaker Platform: Mac Limited amount of users, more useful over intranet Comparable to Access, but said to be easier to use

MSSQL Server 2000 Microsoft's SQL server Platform: PC License Only: $1,500-$20,000 Software: $1,200-$4,000 Based on code licensed from Sybase 6.0 Comes with user interface tools for database manipulation

MySQL Platforms: Windows, Linux, Sun Workhorse of the Web Price: Free No transaction processing, but fast and powerful enough to manage the vast majority of web sites Purchase tools cheaply $50-$400

Oracle v8.0 Platform:PC OS: Windows 2000 server, Windows NT server 4.0 License only Web-based DB, reporting, and groupware Worlds leading supplier of software Second largest independent software company Competes with IBMs DB2, but more widely used with big businesses

PostgreSQL Platform: Linux Price: Free, or license commercial versions Has triggers, transactions, and other DB features Compares to MySQL, but is slower

Sybase Platform: Windows, Sun, Linux Comparable to Oracle Sold source code to Microsoft: Mistake?

Languages Javascript Java Perl TCL Python Vbscript PHP

Javascript Official standard is ECMA script Designed by Netscape roughly based on C, retargeted to look like Java once it was introduced Java and Javascript not related in any form but have similar syntaxes Primarily a Browser extension language, but some servers can interpret to add server-side scripting a few companies that sell JavaScript interpreters that can be embedded in other applications as extension languages (ex. Macromedias dreamweaver, heavy use)

Java Designed by Sun as an interpreted language for TV set top boxes Quickly retargeted to web browsers,then to server-side software (particularly for intranets) where it has been very successful The power of C++, without all the mistakes.

Perl Claim to fame is easy text processing Since web sites typically involve manipulating text in one way or another, it has become the most popular server extension language on the web Objected-orientated makes for easy implementation of new libraries

Tcl As popular as Perl, but more formally designed Tcl is often used as a scripting language for programs that have a graphical interface, since Tcl comes with a nice cross-platform interface library More extensive user interfacing than Perl

Python Extremely object-oriented, and has the distinction of using indentation to specify program structure

VBScript Microsoft's primary scripting language Available in both server and client-side versions (and for non-web applications). VBScript is to VB as JavaScript is to Java, as in look the same but are not ChiliSoft sells a Unix variety of VBScript, which is primarily used by companies who have to develop for both Window's and Unix platforms. ChiliSoft

PHP Started as Perl, but was quickly replaced by it's own interpreter Syntactically it is very similar to Perl PHP is only available as a server-side scripting language.

Web Servers Apache Microsoft IIS Netscape WebSTAR WebSTAR

Apache The leading web server, available both Linux and NT, but primarily used on non-windowsleading Used widely in the ISP and virtual hosting markets Apache is also available for the Mac through a company called Tenon that runs it under a virtual Unix environment The standard web server on MacOS X.

Microsoft IIS Second most popular server Second most popular Used heavily in intranets and ecommerce sites due to heavy integration with other Microsoft components This is only available on NT

Netscape Third most popular Now known as iPlanet; when AOL bought Netscape, the server software went into a joint venture with Sun Available on *ix and Windows platforms

Webstar Macintosh web server from StarNine (a company that started out making tools that integrated Macs with Unix ) Variety of free, shareware and commercial plugins

Scripting Languages ASP/Perl ASP/VBScript ColdFusion HTML::Embperl HTML::Mason JSP Lasso PHP Zope

ASP/Perl Microsoft's ASP is a framework defines a set of standard objects that may be used for communicating with the web server and the remote browser Perl is another language that can use the ASP framework(VBScript more common) Two version: Unix version(Apache::ASP) and Windows version (from ActiveState) called PerlScript

ASP/VBScript What the majority of people mean by “ASP” Chilisoft offers Unix version also A lot of comercial add-ons VBScript is embedded inside of a few special tags (e.g. " ") within the web page. Virtually all modern HTML editors recognize those tags and leave the contents alone

Coldfusion From Allaire was the first commercial server-side scripting language for the web Tag Based: instead of having a limited set of tags which then contain a traditional programming language, you get a whole bunch of new tags Most modern HTML editors can recognize and ignore ColdFusion tags Some editors (UltraDev from Macromedia, a high-end HTML editor based on DreamWeaver) can assist in editing the tags.

HTML::EmbPerl Embperl does not use HTML tags to embed the code (it uses variations on square brackets such as "[+ +]]") Parses some HTML tags and handles them specially based on the context (ex. a form page will automatically be filled in if it submits to itself ) Table rows can automatically loop over the contents of a Perl array or rows in a database without the need to explicitly create loops around them Embperl can also be run stand-alone, without a web server, to create static web pages has a powerful templating system

HTML::Mason Similar to HTML::Embperl or Apache::ASP Primary strength in in building template-based web sites (where each web page is constructed on the fly from a set of component files ) Syntactically it uses tags like those in Apache::ASP to set apart the Perl code

JSP Java Server Pages are tightly integrated with Java Servlets Java Servlet on the fly, where each page becomes it's own servlet Java code fragments are embedded in the web page, and the server compiles them on the fly

Lasso Primary solution if you want to do server-side scripting on the Mac Strong database links and reasonable string processing routines Like Cold Fusion, this is a tag-based language Very good for taking an existing database and making it available quickly on the web

PHP most popular scripting language at shared- hosting facilities PHP is easy to configure for shared hosting Focus has been on providing routines for doing lots of basic things very easily Language which beginners can get started with relatively easily, and yet it allows powerful scripting

Zope Focuses on object-oriented features and includes an object-oriented database Zope is tag-based, but has the ability to add new tags Backend programming language is Python.

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