Do CIO/CTO’s head in directions because of advertisements – instead of actual product capabilities? – yes.

I have worked for a number of companies who purchased ORACLE licenses when an Access (yes, Access) database would have sufficed for their particular need.

On that note though – SQL Server has really dropped in costs (So has ORACLE).. to the point that everyone should be using them. I am not saying anything bad about MySQL however – it does have it’s place and does a great job at certain things.

I have yet to see a real valid argument that .NET 2 (Ok – ASP.NET programmed in either VB.NET or C#) is falling short of the capabilities of PHP. Frankly – becuase I don’t think you can make that arguement.

One could reasonably argue that an ISAPI application could smoke either – I would openly listen to that argument. And Cold Fusion – well- there’s the answer to all our problems I can’t believe there are actually rumors about a new version coming out.

One more thing – the built in spell checking in FF2 is very cool.

As for the second comment about .NET being popular amongst mentally challenged companies, what evidence do you have for such a statement? I’ve only heard that kind of statement from people who treat the open-source movement as a religion rather than a business model and who have never actually tried developing in .NET. While my evidence is purely anecdotal, every developer I’ve talked to who has developed first using open source technologies and then has tried .NET has said they find .NET to be superior.

If anyone else wants to argue the point I suggest using logic and evidence vs. emotion. If you make statements with no basis in fact I’m probably going to resist publishing your comments, unless they’re really entertaining.

1. “PHP vs ASP(Visual Basic Script or JScript)?”

No, PHP vs. .NET. I agree ASP isn’t or wasn’t that great. I don’t know anybody who continues to develop in VB script or especially Jscript. I only mentioned it because people might have legacy applications running in ASP that they could move to a new hosting service and save some money. So let’s not talk about the advantages of PHP over ASP since nobody is making that argument.

2. “Another hidden cost with ASP is the database angle; Microsoft expects you to develop using Access and when your webpage outgrows it, to switch to MSSQL, an extremely expensive option.”

Did you read the post? The whole point is that you no longer have to pay for MS SQL, so it is no longer an extremely expensive option. It will cost you a dollar or two more than MySQL.

Also, no serious web developers work with Access, they start out with MS SQL, so let’s not argue about how MySQL is better than Access since nobody uses Access.

3. “And finally, cost. PHP is free. ASP isn’t free. If you want to use ASP, you have to use IIS, and if you want to use IIS, you have to buy Windows.”

Again, did you read the post? .NET is basically as free as PHP. The only remaining limitation I’m aware of is the cost of the development tools themselves.

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Ryan, most the arguments you put forth would have been completely valid about seven years ago, and partially valid as recently as 1-2 years ago, but unfortunately while you may know plenty about open source you’ve got your mind loaded with data from 1999 and you appear to be completely ignorant of the steps Microsoft has been taking since then.

But again, I’m not a Microsoft proponent. I think open source is great. The whole purpose of this post is not that Microsoft is the most viable option all the time, but simply to point out that Microsoft is a more viable option than it once was.

http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/benchmarks.html
http://librenix.com/?inode=8012
http://marty.anstey.ca/programming/php/articles/
“PHP, while loosely based on C and Perl, has never faced the overwhelming complications ASP has. PHP is an object oriented language – though scripts need not necessarily be developed that way (there are still a vast number of developers preferring procedural programming, and PHP caters to both schools). PHP is both cross platform and open source, available for every major operating system and works with most web servers. It is easily extendable by anyone capable of coding in C, and comes pre-bundled with more functionality than ASP could ever offer. Simple capabilities, such as FTP, data compression, file uploads, XML, MD5, encryption and email are not included in ASP and require expensive, third-party packages to be installed. All of this functionality and more are built right into PHP. Complex functions such as dynamic images, IMAP, SNMP, dynamic flash, PDF, native access (non ODBC) to Oracle, Ovrimos, Postgre, Sybase, mSql, MSSQL, Ingres, Interbase and Informix databases, LDAP, and sockets, just to name a few, are available for free to any installation of PHP, but are not (and probably never will be) available with ASP. In addition, one could make the point that PHP is a more mature language than ASP. ASP has only been around since 1996; PHP has been around since 1994, and has a huge base of developers working on it every waking minute of every day; bugs are usually fixed within minutes of being reported and new features are being integrated daily.

ASP is significantly slower than PHP, for obvious reasons. Primarily, PHP runs on notoriously fast Unix and Linux servers which have for years outpaced Windows running on comparable hardware. ASP does not run on any operating system other than Windows, and even then, only in IIS and PWS. I could discuss countless reasons why IIS makes a terrible web server, but that would be a discussion all on it’s own. PHP runs on almost any web server, on almost any platform. I have even built a web server in PHP which was capable of executing PHP scripts.

ASP natively supports only Access and MSSQL, whereas PHP natively supports a huge number of databases. They both support ODBC equally well. MySQL is a database that PHP closely integrates with; it is a very powerful database that rivals Oracle in speed. Like PHP, MySQL is free, and blows most other databases out of the water. Another hidden cost with ASP is the database angle; Microsoft expects you to develop using Access and when your webpage outgrows it, to switch to MSSQL, an extremely expensive option. What most people don’t realize is how quickly you can outgrow Access. Although you’re technically limited to around 30 simultaneous connections, realistically it’s closer to 5. Not many websites can survive such limitations. Most moderately sized websites require over 1000 simultaneous database connections. In addition, Access is SLOW. And you forego a lot of cool database functionality such as stability, transactions, replication, stored procedures, triggers, and so on. There are so many reasons not to use Access, I can’t even begin to elaborate on them here.

While even the best software has glitches, PHP has notoriously few. The PHP development team has an outstanding reputation for fixing bugs, and in order to streamline the process they even have an online system through which new bug reports can be submitted. Most bugs are resolved within 24 hours, and I’m speaking from experience here. There are a huge number of outstanding bugs in ASP which will probably never be fixed. Unless you’re a major corporation, chances are that your bug report to Microsoft will likely go unanswered.

And finally, cost. PHP is free. ASP isn’t free. If you want to use ASP, you have to use IIS, and if you want to use IIS, you have to buy Windows. Traditionally, the cost of Windows has been high. Microsoft has been aggressively trying to reduce this factor but they’re hardly going to give Windows away for free. The cost of running an ASP-based website implies a full Windows server platform; development costs are higher, software licenses are expensive and speed, security and flexability are all sacrificed.

There’s a reason that Unix and Linux are dominant in the server market; money, security and performance all speak volumes. ”

http://www.phpbuddy.com/sub_articles.php?other_articles=9

http://www.ryanbyrd.net/rambleon

As for hosting, I think it’ll be interesting when Mono is a little more compatible with the *nix environments. It could change the game a little.

As for now, I prefer the windows familiar environment.