Happy Birthday PHP

[Tami]

Popular PHP is hot, and it\'s Canadian
By PETER LAVIN

Quick -- name a Canadian-made computer-programming language.

Time\'s up. If you answered \"Java,\" that\'s true enough -- its originator, University of Calgary graduate James Gosling, created the language for Sun Microsystems Inc. But the top prize goes to those who answered \"PHP.\"

Ten years ago this summer, Rasmus Lerdorf created the wildly popular Web-development language while working at the University of Toronto. Mr. Lerdorf, who returned to the city last week as keynote speaker at the PHP Works conference, is also a University of Waterloo graduate and worked for a number of years at Bell Canada, but is currently employed by search engine giant Yahoo Inc. in California.

Canada had better lay claim to this Internet pioneer quickly, before he\'s considered as American as . . . Alexander Graham Bell. There\'s competition from other countries as well -- already, Google entries list him as a famous Dane. Perhaps Canada should concede Hans Island to the Danes in exchange for exclusive rights to Mr. Lerdorf, a tactic that seems appropriate considering he was born on Disko Island off the coast of Greenland -- not far from the disputed island.


Matters of international diplomacy aside, PHP (which originally stood for \"personal home page\") is a programming language used for creating dynamic Web pages. It\'s not widely known outside programming circles, but the surfing experience today would likely be a lot different without it.

Dynamic sites that allow people to personalize their Web experience by setting up a profile and uploading photos to a page, for example, are now an everyday experience. But 10 years ago, building dynamic pages like this was a messy business -- until Mr. Lerdorf created PHP to simplify and speed up Web development. PHP allowed information to be added to a Web page on the fly from a database rather than having to rewrite every page from scratch with the new information.

The result has been spectacularly successful. PHP is used on about 20 million websites and by more than two million developers. It is the most popular server-side scripting language bar none -- Microsoft Corp.\'s Active Server Pages is a distant second, and other technologies such as Sun\'s Java Server Pages serve a high-end niche market.

But where there\'s success there\'s always some sniping by envious neighbours. Much of it focuses on the fact that PHP is an open-source language -- unlike ASP or JSP, it isn\'t owned by anyone.

For this reason perhaps, security was the hottest topic at the recent Toronto PHP development conference. The consensus among participants was that security with PHP is no different from any other programming language -- the biggest security hole is the uninformed developer.

Another issue is that, as in the Hans Island dispute, PHP is beginning to encroach on territory such as Web services where others have already staked claims. And it is proving itself an able and agile competitor. Microsoft, Sun and IBM have traditionally been dominant in Web services, but PHP is making itself known as a viable alternative that requires less investment in things such as software and expert-level Java-training. According to a programmer at the conference, Fuji Film Inc. is using PHP to deliver updated information and standardized reports over an intranet because it is by far the simplest solution the company has found. The government of PEI looked at Web service products offered by big IT providers, but discovered it could do all it needed using PHP.

This language can certainly help businesses keep their websites lean and competitive. As Mr. Lerdorf put it, PHP allows companies to \"fail early and fail cheap\" -- the point being, why invest in expensive technologies when, in many cases, the job can be done by PHP. If the project isn\'t feasible, the organization will find out quickly with little expense, and can then look elsewhere.

Despite the increased complexity of the Web, PHP has managed to stay true to its original intention to keep things simple. The latest production version, PHP 5, somewhat tardily includes full capabilities for object-oriented programming. In true laissez-faire PHP fashion, there\'s no requirement to use this capability, but contrary to some expectations, an object-oriented approach actually makes many things a lot easier for developers. Programmers can embed a syndicated news feed into a Web page with just three lines of code, for example.

Already, PHP\'s open-source developers are well along with version PHP 6. The challenge will be to keep PHP on the cutting edge and at the same time keep it simple.


Source: Globe Technology

[Scott]

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