Some comments on Oracle's comparison of PHP and ASP.NET

re: Some comments on Oracle's comparison of PHP and ASP.NET

Bertrand Le Roy — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:35:41 GMT

Good for you, Parag, but the name's Bertrand, not Roy.

re: Some comments on Oracle's comparison of PHP and ASP.NET

Parag — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 04:29:48 GMT

I am a Mechanical Engineer. I required to develop a small intranet site for departmental procurement monitoring system. I used MySQL, PHP5 on XP SP2. It did not take me weeks, as "A Real Beginner" says, but just a few days time, in addition to my routine work, to get the site up and running. I am happy, my boss is happy.

I used PHP because I have found MS applications to be like fast food - good to look at & taste, but lacking value.

I know Roy will tell me to go away. Roy, I don't like your attitude, and am not returning to this site... don't bother asking me to go away.

But, before I leave, I must say that everything has its pluses and minuses.... you should be discussing that, rather than ranting against PHP. We see large websites running successfully on PHP. Learn to accomodate others' views.

re: Some comments on Oracle's comparison of PHP and ASP.NET

kxs — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 04:50:08 GMT

I have to say that this blog has quite a history.

I have a few questions:

Now in 2007, where can I find performace statistics for PHP in comparisson to ASP.NET?

Do you have any new information on the pros and cons of ASP.NET and PHP 5?

Thanks

re: Some comments on Oracle's comparison of PHP and ASP.NET

A Real Beginner — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:22:33 GMT

I am a newbie at this stuff, trying to learn along the way, and struggling. I run Windows XP SP-2 and have set up IIS for my testing server. I have installed PHP5 and MySQL, which was a nightmare to get working because of poor documentation. Want help? You have to register on some forum, submit your problem and sift through the scanty replies from people who don't bother to read your questions properly. So, after three weeks of struggle I finally get IIS/PHP/MySql running properly. Two weeks further on I can actually get some data from a database onto the webpage, but it looks awful and I am struggling to learn how to format it.

At the suggestion of a colleague I get myself Visual Studio 2005 and install it, with no problems, in a few minutes. It comes with the MSDN library, so I also have excellent local, step-by-step, help.

In about 15 minutes I create a MS Access database with a table containing the data I need.

In Visual Studio I create an ASPX webpage which reads the data I want from the Access database, nicely formatted just as I want it. This takes me about 45 minutes because I have to consult the help files a few times.

So, PHP = 5 weeks to get nothing, while

ASP.NET = less than 2 hours to get what I want.

For newbies, its a no-brainer.

re: Some comments on Oracle's comparison of PHP and ASP.NET

sebax — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:31:22 GMT

man, you really do not belive yourself, pls stop wasting your time...

re: Some comments on Oracle's comparison of PHP and ASP.NET

Bertrand Le Roy — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 04:37:36 GMT

Mike: I understand your frustration. Here's what I would advise. If you're not the one who's going to develop and maintain the scripts, try to choose people over technology. Find people you trust and let them use whatever they prefer. On the other hand if you're the one doing the work, you should make your own opinion by installing the technologies you're considering and try them out on simple things. The quality of the documentation and support should be one of your top criteria.

re: Some comments on Oracle's comparison of PHP and ASP.NET

Mike — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 04:16:15 GMT

I get on the web to search out ASP versus PHP. I am a small business owner and need to ensure a new contracted developer is not going to sail me down a golden fleece job highway to hell. I developed my own site using FrontPage as a handy tool. I knew nothing about development save my experiences as a browser. I don't like flash, I hate being told to upload crap to view a website, and I know many of my clients can't do so, because some guy in IT limits their ability to download any programs. - Sorry, I ranted a bit... I started with a 20 page site - no school, no training, just a XP with FrontPage and a desire to update a dinosaur launch years ago by a sloppy but expensive and slow developer. I then spun out a new division website with 40 pages, better graphics, more java script and more savvy. Now I'm redeveloping the original site and expanding to over 250 pages of content, I work almost exclusively in HTML Code and use free Java Scripts to emulate Flash crap, and have learned optimal optimization tricks by paying my dues, paying attention to those more learned, and in my free time I run a 8M Industrial Manufacturing Corporation. Now, I'm sick of the bugs in FrontPage forms. I can't keep them on-line (they just go south now and then for no reason) (save MS profit margins and apathy?) and as a business owner I need results, not problems. So a seemingly qualified developer I've screened says "lets move your forms over to ASP (yes, I'm hoping from what I've read so far, he means ASP.NET). But then, my ISP guy says "oh no, you'd be better off to use PHP". So here I am, trying to find out the key differences between the two. The advantages and disadvantages, nothing more or less. "Just the facts madam" as the guy on Dragnet used to say. But what can I say, all I get is a bunch of politically motivated, selfish and trivial crap, very little serious knowledge, and while it's 10:53 PM, I've got to be up at 5:00 AM to run my business. No wonder I don't usually take bogs seriously. They are full of comments from lonely desperate people with no real life, sense of duty or purpose, who just like to rant on and on and on and on, like the bunny on TV. Frustrated…

re: Some comments on Oracle's comparison of PHP and ASP.NET

GoonDocks — Thu, 24 May 2007 19:54:53 GMT

I have over 10 years of web programming experience and have built nearly 100 web sites on multiple platforms. I started with shell CGI scripts, then went to Perl, then to ASP, then to PHP, then back to Perl, then to Java, and now to C#/ASP.NET. I learned "the hard way" and I'm glad I did. I handled my own HTML, form validation, user state saving, template systems, code separation, etc, etc. I also had to manage some of these projects as they grew from something small to something really big. I have also inherited many projects. ASP.NET was hard for me to learn because I was used to doing everything manually. Concepts like events, application life cycles, or server-side form objects were foreign to me. However, I now have 3 years of solid ASP.NET experience under my belt and have launched and maintained some huge projects. Once upon a time I loved PHP. I honestly cannot imagine going back though. It looks terribly hacky by comparison. I cannot imagine anyone using PHP for a "new" large scale web application. Period. For small web sites or for learning the ropes PHP has something to offer. PHP is great for writing little "web scripts". When you are ready to develop web applications however, there are better solutions, methods and concepts available. I truly enjoyed the article and also appreciate the debate on the subject.

re: Some comments on Oracle's comparison of PHP and ASP.NET

Bertrand Le Roy — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 22:18:25 GMT

Well, not really, Oracle should work just fine. There are also providers for MySQL. You can also be in totoal control of the rendering in ASP.NET if that's what you want (the PHP model can more or less be compared to the Render phase of ASP.NET).

I also think that your final statement is unfair as ASP.NET has not changed radically since its inception and has always been backwards compatible (it's even compatible with classic ASP). On the other hand, PHP5 has never been widely adopted because it's considered too big of a change from PHP4, leading its creators to continue to evolve both versions, and even worse, component and application vendors to maintain versions for both engines.

re: Some comments on Oracle's comparison of PHP and ASP.NET

Ollie — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:36:52 GMT

I have programmed in PHP and currently program in ASP.NET. The way I see it is that if you are using SQL Server as your database then ASP is the way to go and if you are using MySQL or Oracle then PHP is a better solution. I have found that using ASP.NET was designed with SQL Server in mind and often I will run into problems using Oracle with ASP.NET. ASP has lots of pre-made objects that are quick to implement as long as you want exactly what is on the one example on Microsoft's website. With PHP you are writing all the objects yourself from scratch and can take more time to write, but you are in total control of the outcome. PHP does not change radically every year so your code has a longer lifecycle. My pereference is PHP, but it is not up to me so I program in ASP.NET.