4 Web Scripting Languages Compared

monkey crunch writes: "ZDNet is running an article comparing PHP, ColdFusion, JSP, & ASP. Although they don't show the script sources, it's interesting to note that PHP garnered the highest performance of the bunch. From the article, PHP: 49pps, ASP: 43pps, CF: 29pps, JSP: 13pps" PHP did gather the highest pps, but it's interesting to also note what the article gave top honors. In any case, it's an interesting topic, but remember: use what's best for you. Don't use what you feel you "have" to.

Comments

Tomcat != JSP

[Mr Neutron]

Note that the Tomcat results shouldn't be taken as representative of all JSP engines. Tomcat is merely one JSP engine of many, albeit the "reference implementation" for JSP. It also has the advantage of being free software. However, lots of other web and app servers (iPlanet, BEA WebLogic, WebSphere, blah, blah) implement their own JSP/servlet engines. Their performance will definitely vary.

Neutron

Altogether a poor article

[Pac]

This article is rather simplistic and poor, both in content and in conclusions. I will not discuss the fact that the "winner" is probably the only potential advertiser (PHP does not advertise, Microsoft and Sun won't advertise only for yet another article about ASP or JSP), but let us see what was left out, misinterpreted or plainly wrong:

a) Python, Perl: How do you write a serious article about web scripting languages leaving these two out? Perl is the mother of all scripting language, Python is a rising star with lots of supporters and amj already huge codebase. And both perform as well as any of the examined technologies.

b) Their priorities were "of speedy development, ease of use, and a complete and powerful API". In a real corporate environment, maintainability and portability would probably outshine all three, ruling CF and ASP out (my opinion, yuor mileage may vary) and leaving the stage for PHP, Python and JSP (more or less in this order, from worst to best).

c) How on earth would COM support make ASP harder to write? In my experience, access to COM objects let you write smaller and sipler scripts.

d) PHP is probably as easy as ASP to learn, it fells rather natural to any C/C++ programmer and it has probably the most powerful API for Web programming of the pack. The the author did not had the time or the will to learn the APIs ("Users must make a concerted effort to keep track of the indepen dently changing components of PHP they are using")

e) Also, the lack of an standardized database API in PHP is botha curse and a blessing. First, there are some PHP libraries out there addressing this issue. Second, the trade here is speed for convenience. Third, all data acess function were made similar, so changing database is not harder than it should be. And finally, PHP supports ODBC.

f) Tomcat is a reference implementation. There are faster alternatives out there.

I will not go on. Forget this article.

If you need speed, ease of use, a fair price (let us say, zero or less), good portability and good mantainability, use PHP, Python or JSP. Or even, if you are really sure your code will never have to leave a Windows box, ASP/COM.

Since when has ASP been a language?

[onion2k]

ASP isn't a language. Its a container for other languages. Its used with VBscript, JavaScript and PerlScript, alongside HTML (And others..). There are no commands in ASP.

As far as I remember ASP was designed to be a sort of glue that holds together a bunch of custom COM objects and DLLs. It was designed to be an operating environment.

In my experience building dynamic web sites (not much.. few years) ASP and PerlScript, with a drop of VB in times of boredom, have always been a good, flexible team. Depends what you're doing..

PHP relatively new:

[Anonymous Coward]

"PHP is relativeliy new and it's not mature enough for corporate use."

Is this a joke ?

PHP has been here since 1994. It's older than the other languages in the chart.

Also, they state that PHP has no uniform database API: This is false:
You can use ODBC for all kinds of database. However, you have the alternative of using the direct APIs to improove performance.

JSP's and Older Techs

[under_score]

I used to do a bit of WebObjects development back in the OpenStep days. WebObjects had three great things going for it: great tools, fantastic database connectivity middleware, and really solid web scripting and tag extentions. Recently, I have been doing Java 2 Enterprise Edition development. At my day job, I am working in a high availability application server environment, and in my night job, I am prototyping a educational web system. In that second role I am using JSP's. (Dislaimer: I love Java compared to C++ but hate it compared to Objective-C.) As the article points out, the tool support is missing, and I personally find JDBC to be a pretty weak database interface, but the actual JSP technology is really cool! I've been working on custom tag extentions and they really rock - solving the problem of separating display code (html) from business logic and model code (accomplished with the use of JavaBeans and EJB's). Personally, I think that the Java platform is the way to go in the long run. JSP's are a really good step to completing the platform and the Tomcat reference implementation is a great tool for prototyping.