[Phpwm] PHP Vs .net

David Goodwin david at codepoets.co.uk
Tue Dec 2 15:37:57 UTC 2008


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Hello Mr Lurker,

> 
> Our current ecommerce site is built on a MS SQL database and has
> recently been re-written in .net (previously asp). The site uses a
> number of third party API’s who recommend the MS platform as their
> preferred solution although in most cases we are aware of other sites
> using the same API’s successfully in a PHP / MYSQL environment. What I
> am looking for are your views on moving the site away from the current
> MS platform to an open source solution utilising PHP and other open
> source tools / databases… we have talked about it with the .net
> developers and they are (naturally) bleating about lack of support and
> all the usual BS…  therefore I guess my question is… Should PHP / MYSQL
> be seriously considered for a reasonably busy ecommerce site that needs
> 24 hour uptime, 99% reliability, PCI DSS compliant security etc etc.

If your inhouse developers are software engineers (i.e. they've had a
some formal training, understand object orientation and design patterns)
then changing to e.g. PHP shouldn't be that much of an issue - but
they'll obviously need to retool - (editors/tools, practices, libraries
etc) which may take some time. PHP is supposed to be easy to pick up....
but even so.


I've not used .NET so I can't comment too much, but:

1. Hosting is easy to find for PHP

2. There are no license/scalability costs with PHP/(MySQL|PostgreSQL)

3. You could continue to use MSSQL on the backend if you wish

4. There is probably more choice with PHP (libraries, frameworks,
deployment platforms etc).. perhaps too much choice?

5. Lack of support - Do people actually contact Microsoft asking for
support with .NET? Anyway, there's obviously phpwm (!), various
companies and consultants who specialise in PHP within the region,
plenty of books, great online documentation, IRC, PHP conferences (phpnw
& phplondon) etc, php magazines, planet php etc.

6. I see no reason why you couldn't get PCI DSS compliance with a PHP
site; I'm sure people have. I'm sure it's the same hoops to jump through.

7. PHP scales well and the solution can easily be hosted to achieve 99%
reliability in a high performance scenario (99% isn't all that much anyway).


The problems you will have are :

a) You have (presumably) a large legacy code base; do you really want to
start again? You could probably run PHP alongside ASP, but it would be a
bit messy (I doubt you could access a session started in .NET in PHP).
It may take a year to develop something in any.other.language - this is
quite a long time! How do you justify this expense?

b) PHP runs best on Linux/Solaris/Unix - unless you have Windows
2008(??), so your sysadmins may also bleat.

That's just my 2p,

David.

- --
David Goodwin

[ david at codepoets dot co dot uk ]
[ http://www.codepoets.co.uk       ]
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