Re: PHP, Zend, & mod_perl

[Joshua Chamas]

Ken Gunderson wrote:
> 
> Greets All:
> 
> About this time a year or so ago I inquired about php vs perl/mod_perl use
> with MySQL.  There was healthy debate and I concluded it was about split,
> with PHP having advantages in ease of use and mod_perl in speed and
> capabilities.  During the ensuing year PHP has added to it's feature list
> and grown ever more popular.   One doesn't seem hear much about mod_perl
> lately.  PHP enthusiasts have been know to speculate that Zend/PHP4 will
> accelerate PHP's popularity into the stratosphere and all but eliminate the
> use of Perl for web programming.  Still, the mod_perl and Apache API are
> well proven paths.  So I repose my question of a year ago and ask the gurus
> to once more elaborate a bit about the relative merits of each and where we
> are today on these issues.
> 

Ken,

I don't use PHP, but have seen benchmarks for it, and at least
for small scripts it is VERY fast.  Check out some web app
benchmarks that I keep at:

  http://www.chamas.com/hello_world.html

These benchmarks are for a simple Hello World script, and
are not good indicators of performance for larger scripts.
Rasmus, of PHP, seemed to indicate that mod_perl performs
better on larger more complex scripts than does PHP, though
Zend is supposed to help eliminate this difference.

All in all, opinions seems to concurr that you should pick
whatever you like, as the performance differences between
these environments don't ultimately matter so much in the end.
What matters more is how quickly can you deploy an application,
which improves if you are working in a familiar environment.

That said, under mod_perl, Apache::ASP, Embperl, Mason and
separately PHP all offer sophisticated embedded web application
environments that are extremely fast, widely used, and portable.  

Personally, I prefer perl, DBI database access and Apache::ASP
web development, but I'm biased as I developed the latter.

Also note that Linux & FreeBSD seems to be faster than other 
OS's at least on a single CPU, and that MySQL is at least 
2-3 times faster than Oracle for a large application, which 
includes work arounds for MySQL's lack of triggers & 
transactions, & row level locking.

-- Joshua
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Joshua Chamas			        Chamas Enterprises Inc.
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