1. PHP/ASP Robert Nelson & Will Vanlue BA370 November 4 th, 2005

2. Server Side Processing (SSP) HTTP is a stateless protocol –How do we overcome this? With SSP Server Side Processing Definition: –Coding that is placed in served files, and evaluated on the server while the files are being served to the client. They let you add dynamically generated content to an existing file (usually HTML pages). With SSP, we are able to “remember” previous activity from internet clients SSP has many other functions too.

3. Server Side Processing (SSP) Languages and technologies that allow for dynamic content in web pages Call allow for the inclusion of time, connection, geographic, or browser – dependent information Online shopping, personalized content, developing directories, and other non- static applications require SSP

4. Server Side Processing (SSP) Many technologies used to implement SSP –ASP, PHP, JSP, Coldfusion, ASP.NET, Java, Perl, Python, C#, etc. Why PHP/ASP? –Very widely used languages –Both have relatively low learning curves –Large support communities http://www.php.net http://msdn.microsoft.com

5. Server Side Processing 1 ClientServer Other Requests (servers, database apps, etc.) 1.Client requests a page from the server 2.HTTP Server passes PHP/ASP page to interpreter application. 3.Interpreter parses code and returns it to HTTP server as HTML. 4.Page is delivered back to client as HTML. 4 Interpreter (PHP, ASP) 2 3

6. History of PHP PHP/FI (1995) –“Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter” –Created by Rasmus Lerdorf –Sample set of Perl scripts to track online access to documents –Relatively inconsistent syntax –Lerdorf chose to publicly release the source code PHP/FI 2.0 (1997) –“Cult” like following of thousands of users –Approximately 50,000 pages (1% of the internet) report usage –Spent most of it’s life in beta PHP 3.0 (1998) –Recursive Acronym: PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor –First version to resemble modern PHP –Created by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski with help from Lerdorf –Name was changed to make it sound more useful for commercial usage –Object oriented and very consistent syntax –Tens of thousands of users –Hundreds of thousands of pages (10% of the internet) report usage

7. History of PHP PHP 4.0 (1999) –New “Zend Engine” at the core Named after Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans Handled third party databases much more efficiently –Improved portability with a wider variety of server compatibility –Provides more secure transfers of information –Hundreds of thousands of users –Several millions of pages (20% of the internet) report usage PHP 5.0 (2004) –Had several pre-releases –Zend Engine 2.0 –Dozens of new features

8. History of ASP “Classic” ASP –ASP 1.0 (1996) Supports interpreted VBScript and JScript –ASP 2.0 (1997) –ASP 3.0 (2000) ASP.NET –ASP.NET 1.0 (2002) Can replace HTML scripting with full support for.NET languages In-page scripts are still supported VB.NET and C# classes can generate pages –ASP.NET 2.0 (2005) Scheduled release of November 7 th Easier to use, “drag-and-drop”, interface

9. PHP Features Source code is not sent to the browser Code is bracketed by “ ” Can be inserted into HTML code or can be a stand alone application File extension needs to be.php,.php3,.php4, etc. Server must have PHP interpreter installed Supports database control Source code is OPEN

10. ASP Features Source code is not sent to the browser Code is bracketed by “ ” Can be inserted into HTML code or can be a stand alone application Supports a wide variety of.NET languages Server must have ASP.NET installed Supports database control, but may need third party drivers Source code is CLOSED

11. Code Demos Demo 1: Simple Password Generator PHP Code | ASP Code | Output PHP Code ASP Code Output Demo 2: Sessions & Cookies PHP Code | ASP Code | Output PHP Code ASP Code Output Demo 3: Database Connectivity PHP Code | ASP Code | Output PHP Code ASP Code Output

12. Comparison of ASP Pros –Professional tech support –Versions are documented at msdn.microsoft.com –Run on many company intranets –Has a familiar Microsoft environment –Widely available Cons –Only practical to run on a Windows server –Support can be expensive

13. Comparison of PHP Pros –Open source –Freely available –Very portable –Active user community –Uses relatively little processor power Cons –More CPU intensive on a large scale –Extensibility is relatively limited

14. ASP vs. PHP ASPPHP Languages VBScript, JavaScript, C#, etc. PHP Platforms Windows (others can be used, but third party software is needed) Any platform for which the source code is available Portability PoorExcellent Scalability GoodPoor Source Code ClosedOpen Learning Curve LowMedium

15. Questions?

16. References Wikipedia.org –http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Server_Pageshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Server_Pages Glasshaus.com –http://www.glasshaus.com/samplechapters/1086/chap ter8.asphttp://www.glasshaus.com/samplechapters/1086/chap ter8.asp Php.net –http://www.php.net/historyhttp://www.php.net/history Apache.org –http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/ssi.htmlhttp://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/ssi.html