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Zend Compiler

The Zend Compiler, to be released later this year, allows code developers to compile their PHP script before distributing it. By saving the code in a closed Zend Intermediate Code format, the compiler allows developers to protect source code from copyright infringement, enabling companies to create exclusive software solutions and commercial PHP applications.

Business-oriented developers who want to enjoy the benefits of PHP scripting, without exposing their source code, will find the Zend Compiler indispensible for all mission critical business applications that must protect the source code from copyright infringement. This product provides copyright and intellectual property protection, opening the way for the widespread acceptance of PHP for business and commercial applications, where protection of proprietary information is of primary concern.

http://www.zend.com/zend/products.ph p#compiler
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Scott Stevenson

PHP suffers from many of the same problems as CGI (logic and HTML combined in the same place, etc)

This doesn't make any sense. You can write PHP externally included PHP functions that return values to code that is used to display the data. You can also write modules, ala Beans in JSP. And even excepting that, mod_perl is even worse since it's not inherently embedded in HTML, correct?

However, PHP, even well-written PHP. will never be as fast as a well-written mod_perl handler, for the simple reason that mod_perl handlers are compiled once and live in memory for the life of the Apache server (parent) process. There is no file to read every time it gets called.

Never is a long time. :) PHP3 may have the limitations you cite, but PHP4 with Zend does not. Take a look at the Zend products page. I believe it addresses the exact issues you cite.

Plus, PHP (and CGI, and JSP, and servlets) have the limitation that they can only produce output.

This doesn't sound right to me, but I don't entirely understand what you're getting at so I'll skip it and let somebody else it pick it up.

You want to customize the authentication process? Nope, you can't do that in JSP.

I don't about JSP's capabilities in this case, but you can definitely customize the authentication process in PHP. Check out page 505 of the Wrox PHP book.

As far as mod_perl not scaling well, I will not consider this limited to execution time. In my experince, it quadruples the resident memory size of Apache daemons. It underscores the fact that Perl is carrying around a lot of baggage that doesn't necessarily apply to the web. PHP and JSP are web languages.

- Scott
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Scott Stevenson

• However, PHP, even well-written PHP. will never be as fast as a well-written mod_perl handler, for the simple reason that mod_perl handlers are compiled once and live in memory for the life of the Apache server (parent) process.

For those of you who care about such things: the Zend optimizer for PHP is free as in beer, not speech. Please refer to http://www.zend.com/zend/optimizer.php

If you are building webpages I think the best tool is undoubtedly PHP. It has all the power of perl (with the exception of regexes which are not as evolved) and it is far faster to develop in, and probably to learn as well.

It supports multiple different databases, including mysql, postgresql, as well as any ODBC compliant db.

Version 4, due to be released this month I believe (its currently available as RC1) offers an optimizer (available at Zend.com), and will come with a compiler as well.

It easily integrates directly into your HTML code. It is multiplatform, and its free.

Its main advantage is the ease with which web applications or websites can be developed. I am currently working on the software for the backend support of several websites, and using PHP I am able to develop this application very rapidly. Far faster than I might be able to do with Perl.

Obviously for those who already know Perl, they will be able to develop just as effectively in that scripting language anything that can be done in PHP. But for the new user seeking to learn a scripting language, PHP cannot be beat.

My employer does a lot of data-mining at a very low level: we have one of the most complex read *and* write data-mining applications out there, and yes we do a lot in SPLs, and SQL and C++ and even our own in-house languages. I am confident (in fact, I know) that you can considerably out-perform SQL if you write "to the metal", in this case the data-structure itself.

Knowing this, and the problem I laid out before (that the DB developer doesn't know what the application developer needs) I have personally started to question the need for an RDBMS, particularly in the case of Web applications.

Let's face it, a full RDBMS for a data-store of a few TBs makes perfect sense, but for a website of a few pages (even a few hundred pages) it's overkill, especially, as a lot of posts have said so far, since that's where your bottleneck is in dynamic sites. So why are we running full RDBMS, or even low-powered clones of such (i.e. MySQL)?

I am willing to bet performance would go wayyy up, if you could have a relational data structure directly available from PHP (a basic B* tree, for example). Why?

One factor: PHP does caching; but it can't cache an *external* data source, such as a DB table, because it can't be sure that it was not modified by someone else; but, if the datasource was *internal* to PHP, caching of records, queries or whole tables would be simple: less disk/data access = more speed.

If you are not familiar with the wonders of PHP4 (not 3.x), check out php.net (and the best online manual in existence) and the now private company behind their engine, Zend. The Zend folks have recently got together with the MySQL folks, to further integrate the two platforms; there is a chance they will end up with a direct access scheme --and that's the main reason I am betting on PHP...


engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.

I disagree.

Although I don't know about ASP, PHP4 compiles the scripts before executing them. Zend has been working on a compiler for php4 and although this doesn't solve the problem today, it will help a lot in the future.

Stored procedures are good if you like to write your applications in propriatary code. They are fast, but, I've found, are very hard to maintain.

It's no harder to maintain business logic in a PHP or ASP script than it is a C script. It's just code.

check the press release here. And like I said when the article was rejected, it's not opensource but at least it's not crippleware.

I think it's a shame though, as the backend of mysql seems to be much worse then postgreSQL.

For those who have been following the development of php one answer to the question is obvious. Modularisation of additional features allows zend to decide exactly which features of the project they wish to gpl and which they would rather commercialise. It remains to be seen whether this amalgomy of open source and commercial principles will be popular among those consumers for whom open source is becoming a way of life.
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The latest version of php- Version 4 - uses the zend engine. Zend has an optomizer and a cacheing option. I've used php3 and I am pretty happy with it. php4 is still in beta, but its almost done.

I hope this helps.



john

Microsoft's spokesperson for ASP said:

So, let's try it slowly:

ASP = language independant object toolkit for writing server side web applications

PHP = combination of a new high level scripting language and a way of embedding it in HTML and having an http server execute it.

Zend = free language independent parsing engine for writing server side web applications, powers PHP4


ASP is a well thought out object model that gives access to session maintenance at a range of persistence levels and scopes, as well as cached, efficient DB connections, and feature rich objects that handle HTTP transactions.

Feature rich objects, now with 40% more widgets! :)

Session management is built into PHP4, and is available in PHP3 through PHPLIB. I have no idea what qualifies as "cached, efficient DB connections", but I know MySQL is quite fast and effecient. Plus, you don't have to pay $1500 for MS SQL Server.

Sorry, I can't help it. I'm a PHP advocate.

- Scott

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Scott Stevenson

We are a small Internet development shop, running a few servers and a mixed bag of development stations. Currently, there are three Linux boxen on our network, running the latest RedHat releases. We are looking to put in three more systems, for a total of 5 running some Linux/UNIX like OS.

• A MySQL server box
• A Firewall
• A Mail/Fileserver
• 2 Webservers running Apache / PHP(Zend)

When we perform this upgrade, we are willing to change operating systems if there is a demonstrable benefit. Due to recent slashdot postings we have started looking at OpenBSD as our server OS. Now, we do understand that RedHat is not the only Linux distribution available, but we don't really want to get into a Linux/Linux war here. We don;t mind changing if we should for technical reasons - but the Linux world seems more hip and vibrant, and we really like the penguin T-shirts we have... so if we can stay on Linux then we want to.

So far, we like what we hear about OpenBSD - but we don't know if the things we like are inherent in the relative designs of OpenBSD or if they are results of policy choices by the OpenBSD team. If they are the results of policy decisions, then with any luck a Linux distribution could be found that exhibited the same characteristics?

Features we like about OpenBSD:

• It seems like the release/testing cycle is extremely carefully controlled. While a freewheeling machine with lots of OpenSource code on the desktop is a good thing, for a server it seems that a smaller group exercising testing/release control is a more controlled system.
• The integrated crypto looks great, the one time use passwords look like a big winner here.
• There are a lot of references to OpenBSD's security and stability - but none with any specific examples or technical backing.
• The file layout on OpenBSD seems like a winner, it looks like things live in a well thought out and logical set up - not in a mishmash like RedHat.

Assumptions:

These systems will be running the server software they need, and X11 + (Gnome||KDE) for administration and so on. They will not be running the latest stuff from Linuxberg or a bunch of things that would be on a desktop OS. So we are going to try very hard not to introduce any instabilities. We aren't going to be compiling running games, sound drivers and the like that integrate directly into the kernel.

The questions are:

1. Is OpenBSD more secure in some fundamental way that a well maintained Linux distribution?
2. Is OpenBSD more stable than a well maintained Linux distribution?
3. Will the OpenSource software we normally need (firewall, Apache, PHP4, Perl, Python) and so on probably compile on OpenBSD?
4. Does OpenBSD have something like clustering support (Beowulf) and failover?
5. Is the performance of a well maintained OpenBSD system better than a well maintained Linux distribution?
6. Does Linux have anything like the one time use password system?
7. Does OpenBSD support multiple CPU's better then Linux?

Thanks for taking the time, and hopefully we can keep the flames down to nothing and talk about technical issues this time.

Quicksort (script ran 50 times)

ccc version: 27s
gcc version: 30s

Mandelbrot (script ran 50 times)

ccc version: 35s
gcc version: 39s

Actually, PHP's performance isn't that great at the moment for high loads. However, it *is* good enough, and the flexibility it gives is sufficient that I for one use it on my sites. Either way, Zend should send PHP performance through the roof in the near future. They have some simple ASP v Zend benchmarks on the site, too...