Posted by NC on 09/07/05 04:05

David wrote:
>
> I have seen postings that indicate some developers are creating
> PHP apps for a Windows server environment. I am not sure if
> they run underr IIS or Apache, but I wonder why Windows and PHP
> vs. the PHP/Apache/Linux triumvirate.

Any number of reasons, really. Here are a few:

1. You want to have both PHP and ASP available for development
and testing. One way to solve this problem is to run PHP
under IIS (with ASP already there).
2. You want PHP to be a part of an application suite somehow
tied to Windows. One of my PHP/MySQL applications, for
example, contains a third-party data update utility
implemented as a Windows executable.
3. You want to automate certain tasks under Windows, and
command-line PHP attracts you as just the tool for the job.
4. You want command-line scripting with advanced capabilities
(such as access to databases, reading remote files, etc.)
5. You already have a Windows server running, but want to
deploy a PHP application.

> I would think that if you developed under windows, why not
> stick to ASP.net and IIS.

Because PHP runs under IIS, too; also, PHP allows you to
break away from object-oriented programming, which in many
cases is unnecessarily confusing.

> If you want to use Apache, why not stick with Linux.

What if you don't want to use any Web server at all (as in
command-line scripting)?

Cheers,
NC

[Back to original message]