To start, I'll echo Ross. PHP is great for sessions and all manners of web-type programming. Unlike Java - an otherwise excellent language which tends to require some complex-ish web server setup - PHP is much more lightweight and plugs into just about any web server quickly and efficiently. The language is purportedly derived from Perl but syntactically I find it closer to the original ANSI C++ with just a touch of Java-isms to keep it friendly. It's easy (dare I say "fun"?) to learn, easy to read, easy to deploy, and can be very maintainable (though of course individual mileage in this department varies per individual - as with all languages).
There are all sorts of frameworks and infrastructures available for PHP but one doesn't have to use anything more than an editor to get started. The documentation is well written (I find it much more understandable than most) and there are plenty of books available with code samples to get one moving in the right direction. PHP can install with lots of different modules from SQL connectors to crypto libraries, ZIP and PDF creators and extractors, and a blindingly large array of other features as well. And if that's not enough there's a whole boatload of other user-contributed libraries available via PEAR. Generally speaking, (well written) PHP code performs very well, it's a reasonably mature language with a good object model (as of PHP5) but where it really shines is in passing data to and through a web server and managing sessions. I've also used it for *nix shell scripting for administration types of things and even had the pleasure of writing a NAGIOS plugin with it. Come to think of it, I've used it for all sorts of ad-hoc data analysis on my Windows box as well when awk was just a little too ... awkward? (pun intended, of course) I've heard PHP is the #2 language in the world behind C++, but I don't know definitively that's entirely reliable. That said, it does seem like it's gaining momentum because it's so flexible and pervasive. The fact that it can be used beyond the web and on nearly every platform imaginable without additional hardware or software, well, that has to account for something. The only downside to PHP in terms of U2 is that IBM has so far refused to create any kind of native connector. The UO connector "works" but it requires something of a walk on the wild side to mitigate some weirdness in the dynamic array extraction methods. Yeah, there's that TechConnect article which describes rolling your own, but even I'm not THAT geeky. Finally, FREE is always a good price, especially when you get so much with PHP. -K _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list [email protected] http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
