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I originally found this link in a news post on the php|architect site. (You can find the news post a few pages back in their archive).
It is a link to speaking notes of Michael J. Radwin from Yahoo talking about one year of PHP use at Yahoo.
http://public.yahoo.com/~radwin/talks/
There are occassional threads about "is PHP Enterprise ready?" - Well, given the size of Yahoo, I think they make an interesting point of reference for any debate.
Cheers,
Keith.
Personally I think this whole "Enterprise Ready-ness" of a language is such a b*s.. concept, like having a couple of interface, private, protected and abstract statements suddenly make a language Enterprise ready..
Also, I am convinced that now with PHP 5's OO support being improved, people will find other things to complain about, about PHP not being enterprise ready.
Yahoo and many others prove that PHP is just as well suited to write 'enterprise applications' (yach, such an empty term invented by marketing people..) as any other language, if you ask me. Some languages are just better suited for some tasks than others.
even in php4 you can emulate all of the access limitiations and class improvements from php5 -- to me, all enterprise means is just:
'additions to make a language child safe for people who suck *** at writing secure scripts'
I.E.
field access (don't touch that because it contains a cleartext password!)
method access (hands off -- this method changes the cleartext password)
constant methods (don't overwrite our working, secure method with one that sucks)
interfaces (so we can show you how to do this so you don't mess up -- and if you DO mess up, then you'll get screamed at)
abstract classes (we'll provide all of the main functionality, you just write some simple methods to make it look like you actually did something)
I mean, I love having this stuff, but that's all it essentially does. Stop the bad programmer from ruining something good.
Edit:
In retrospect (all 3 minutes of it), I can see all of my sarcasm and pessimism coming out in a big parade of intertwined thoughts and rants -- And I like it.
To quote Martin Fowler in "Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture";
That doesn't rule out PHP in any way.Quote:
Enterprise applications are about the display, manipulation and storage of large amounts of often complex data and the support or automation of business processes with that data.
Perhaps the greatest PHP success (or failure depending on your perspective on it's design) is Sourceforge though, not Yahoo, SF being alot more complex.
Bah, I wanna slug SF half the time because it seems to load slow :)
But really, SF is pretty impressive.
I brought up Yahoo because who in the world hasn't heard of Y!?
Cheers,
Keith.
My Sister In Law's Mother LoL
Honestly though folks there are still people out there who actually think the Internet is merely Email; A web page is an alien concept to them.
Let's all show some sympathy for them aye ?
Why do they need our sympathy? All of my grandparents know what the internet is, and only like half of them use it -- All you have to do is turn on your TV, and there is bound to be some news report about 'hackers' (i despise the context that they use hackers in *adamantly* btw) or the latest web site from Microsoft.
Microsoft ? Not recently here in the UK although there are some adverts for IBM E Business solutions mostly of what I remember...
Plus there are folks who've never even seen nor used a microwave never mind e-mail ;)
Hill Billy's I think they're referered to as ?
It's hillbilly, they live right up the hill from me, up in them thar hills. I'm from East Tennessee, where I think they originated. Yeah, I'm mostly hillbilly myself, but I have indoor plumming :D
Also, I think the big problem with web pages is people think it's easy to do. yeah, just open Microsoft Word and then .... lol
Exactly... Anybody with a WP and they think they're a web developer... I've seen those people and I basically just make a complete **** out of them... Like what do I know with my DB knowledge and PHP scripting ? When they know HTML...
:lol: ... :lol: ... etc etc
Over here in Scotland hillbilies are known as chockters; difficult to pronounce as well as to spell it but it basically means tough.
Myself ? I'm a town person me, or a yockle... don't ask ;)
Off Topic:
Would that be a "local yockle"? Never knew the origin of that coloquialism :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
...so now that we are back to the Enterprise PHP topic...
Do you think now that PHP is going to be "Enterprise" ready that larger companies will begin adopting a PHP as their intranet/extranet/internet solutions?
In all honesty, I think the term "Enterprise" is a load of marketing yarbles.
PHP is no less "enterprise" ready than ASP. ASP.Net is a bit of a different story (for large scale apps anyway).
PHP will be adopted in the "enterprise" when a decision maker who has a clue about it decides it's the right tool for the job. But if they don't know it, they're more likely to go with the commerical solution every time.
I think the term mostly refers to as a language that a business would consider using. PHP is getting close to being accepted by the majority of the business world, it's coming :D
I think the term would be more suitable to designers/coders than to a language.
Any language in the right hands can be used to do powerful things.
That being said, PHP in the right hands could be a very powerful business tool, especially considering it's licensing fees and initial cost when compared to more "advanced" alternatives.
Exactly.Quote:
Originally Posted by bonk
Thing is, not a lot of decision makers have a clue about it in my experience. Not that they're stupid people - far from it (mostly :)) - but they haven't had the exposure. Let's face it, PHP is pretty "new" compared to anything that has Microsoft stamped on it.Quote:
Originally Posted by hillsy
It's a useful tool and eventually I'm sure it will gain quite wide acceptance. But I think it can do that on its own (current) merits without "improving" it for the "enterprise". Often as not, these things are a matter of perception and status quo as anything else.
In other words, I'm not sure it's totally a technical question. Though technical improvements are still always welcome I guess :D
Sweatje -
Local ? As to Elgin... Nope I'm from the South / Central Belt of Scotland and proud of it... William Wallace Country;
Freedom.... Ahem.
Seen Braveheart with Mel Gibson no ? If you've seen this film you'll at least have a sense of what I mean by ''Freedom....'' I hope ?
I doubt PHP will gain any significant share of the "enterprise" market before it has a decent class library and (a) more standardized development process(es) i.e. PHP needs to pick a few of the 49 gazillion ways (with their accompanying frameworks) you can develop a web site with it, and make them the standard, so that it's possible to get certified and educated in PHP, and actually have it mean anything. ;)
After that happens, were talkin'!
The "class library" issue is a paper barrier IMO. It's like saying English isn't an "Enterprise Language" because we have too many words that sound the same but mean totally different things. What PHP needs is MARKETING.
Yeah, lets get some hot chicks laying all over the PHP oval and smack the images on every major web site around :agree:Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil.Roberts
I totally disagree, the single biggest problem with PHP is lack of standardization.Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil.Roberts
Take .net (or java) for example, every .net developer will be familiar with certain concepts and the .net framework, therefore when people have to work together they have a common base to start from, with PHP there is no common base and everyone just uses their prefered options, which is fine if you work on your own or with the same few people all the time, but when it comes to Enterprise you have to work with many different people and this lack of standization severaly hampers PHP in that respect.
Just look at one simple aspect, templating, .net and java both have standard methods for using template tags, on the other hand PHP seems to have an endless supply of templating systems available (smarty, fast template, ETS, template tamer, yabs and so on...), with everyone using different systems whenever people want to work together on a large "enterprise" project people will have to learn yet another templating system, which is not conducive to effeicient development. This can also be extended to eveything else PHP such as frameworks, class libraries etc, it also doesn't help that the class library that PHP is trying to push as the standard (PEAR) is not up to much.
Yeah because Microsoft certificates mean so much. :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by M.Johansson
Doubtful that everything hangs in the balance due to Microsoft's Certifications ? There is far more to the Internet and the development world than merely Microsoft folks...
If we all had one template standard, etc etc then IMO this would hinder each of our individual creativity if you see what I mean for example ?
But yes, PHP does need marketing and it need to be aimed at the right people; those who make decisions and actually have the influence to do something about what technology is used to develop the software no ?
So, basically because PHP is extremely flexible and doesn't tie you into lockstep methods of doing anything it isn't suitable for enterprise applications?
Pardon me if I find that rather silly.
Your pardoned. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil.Roberts
I personally find it far more silly have to learn the same thing over and over again just because one project uses smarty, eclipse and PEAR, whilst another uses fast template, eoscene and their own custom library they built, because PEAR was crap.
Incidently .NET nor Java tie you into methods of doing things, people are quite able to write their own templating systems if they want, but most people realise Microsoft and Sun have done pretty decent jobs, so spend the time doing something more useful.
I would liken working with PHP in relation to enterprise, to a meeting where everyone speaks a different language and they need an interpreter to communicate, very inefficient and slow.
Neil already said it, but just because you have a standard doesn't mean you are tied to use it. You are in no way tied to using the Web Forms framework when developing ASP.NET pages, but it's a very good standard to have, since you can, as an outsider-developer, jump right into a project and understand it immideatly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
Umm - I don't understand what the this sentence means.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
Another issue I see is the number of new people to PHP. It seems on some forums that there's just tons of people just starting out. Maybe a lot of non-php people see this and think that all php people are like this. Yeah, there are some very good people on this forum and such, but the huge ratio of new to old just seems tremendous.
It might just be me seeing all of the new, but I get tired of explaining $_GET a dozen times.
I think PHP is ready for the enterprise. I don't think it's the best solution, but if there are VERY good developers working with it I think it can be fine.
The reality of the Radwin/Zawodny thing is that they both understand PHP's limitations, and when they recommended to Yahoo that they take PHP onboard it was because it was the best thing out there for them, and because they were trying to move Yahoo away from using their own language.
In that respect PHP was the best move at the time, and probably still is.
But, it isn't used for everything, far from it, it's used mainly in SELECT-heavy areas, though a lot of new properties are being done in PHP.
That said, there are 3-4 properties using ASP and .NET as well so it's really hard to gauge...
At the end of the day, I think Java and .NET are more suited to enterprise development (for those who think there's no difference, I'd wager you've never worked with application/load balancing servers, right?), but that PHP/ASP/CFM can do it as well.
J
What I was meaning is that a technology/language doesn't rely on it's advancement based solely on certification by the technology's owner;
ie .NET and Microsoft's widely accepted certification no ? As an example, thus for PHP to be accepted as ''Enterprise'' the language doesn't wholly need developer's to be certified...
Hope that helps ? :D
Ah, now I get it, thanks!Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
Well, it's hugely innacurate for someone to state that .NET technology mainly relies on MCAD/MSCD etc for skill-measurement, since there are plenty of colleges and universitys that are implementing .NET into their lesson plan, and a degree often weighs more than a little MCAD.
With that said, MCAD is a very cheap and fast (uh well, compared to a degree, I mean) to get prove your skills, and get a higher salary. I do belive the MCAD is so far the only industry-wide-accepted certification for .NET, but that's understandable, since it's so new. For older Microsoft products, there are more recognized non-microsoft certifications.
I second this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeremy W.
Umm... In some cases true, although myself for example I am not certified although I would have to say that I am competent in PHP.Quote:
Well, it's hugely innacurate for someone to state that .NET technology mainly relies on MCAD/MSCD etc for skill-measurement....
Does this disqualify myself from a position whereby another candidate who has been certified is applying for the same post ?
Certification helps a lot but it does not guarantee that the certified person is more comptetent etc if you see where I'm at ? ;)
If they demand some kind of certification and/or degree for the post (which is often the case), then hell yeah! ;9Quote:
Does this disqualify myself from a position whereby another candidate who has been certified is applying for the same post ?
Yeah, I see where you are at, but that's just theoretical. In reality, certifications and degrees matters A LOT. If you have little prior work experience and a weak/nonexistent portfolio, it incredibly important. A certification does guarantee one thing, and one thing only, that the person in question knows his stuff, which is what the employer wants.Quote:
Certification helps a lot but it does not guarantee that the certified person is more comptetent etc if you see where I'm at ? ;)
So you say, but if I'm to employ you, how do I know you actually are? I have 85 other people here who also say they are competent. Among them I have 15 people with computer science degrees and 25 with certifications in the appropriate category. Why should I take you into an interview?Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
And the immideate followup question, if you are qualified, why haven't you gotten a certification? It's pretty cheap if you already know the stuff.
Certification certainly doesn't gurantee anything, in fact these days I'd rather see someone do a test app for me for when they came to an interview. Why? Well certification is all well and good, but these days a chimp could get certification on MCSD etc. because of the boot camps they have, you cram for a week, take an exam, 3 days later you've forgotten it all because you just parrot fashion learnt it and didn't actually experience real world use of it - now that's what makes you learn and remember, real word experience and practice.
That's true, if you are going to hire a peron with a certification, you better ensure that they have real-world experience too boot. Otherwise, the certification is worthless. With that said, I think like tests like MCAD are a little too complex to parrotlearn.Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl
It depends, I can't say I've looked in great deal at MCAD but as a guess the examination is done in parts/modules? If so then it's as easy as any other test to parrot fashion learn it. Which is a shame, because there are people out there who have put a great deal of effort in to taking these exams and really do know their stuff, just that these boot-camps undermine the credability of the certifications.
The MCAD has three exam tests. One is for web applications, one is for web services, and one is for SQL Server.Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl
The first one demands three books, two big and one huge. Nobody could parrotlearn such amounts of information. They could, of course, if they had access to the tests, parrotlearn the answers, I guess. I don't know how a bootcamp works, to be honest.
They are nothing compared to the braindumps and warez scene for the complete tests. With that said, there are always people who will lie, cheat and go through bootcamps etc. just to get employed. Hopefully, these people will get stumped on references or interview, but at worst, they'll be shot down at the trial emplyoment. I personally don't think you should discount certifications, but then again, I'm not an employer. Does anyone here have some real-world insight into this?Quote:
Which is a shame, because there are people out there who have put a great deal of effort in to taking these exams and really do know their stuff, just that these boot-camps undermine the credability of the certifications.
I wouldn't count them out completely, just take them with a big pinch of salt.
Then we agree. But when you're employing someone, aren't you taking pretty much everything with a pinch of salt?Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl
Well said :DQuote:
Certification certainly doesn't gurantee anything, in fact these days I'd rather see someone do a test app for me for when they came to an interview. Why? Well certification is all well and good, but these days a chimp could get certification on MCSD etc.
No disrespect to your self M Johansson although the above quotation has a very valid point yes ?
I still have no clue what this has to do with .NET or PHP in the enterprise. It's a discussion on certification in general. For taht matter it's turned into a discussion on education in general.
I agree with jeremy that we are going offtopic.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
Off Topic:
But as I've stated in my last few posts, that quote does have a very valid point. And I guess I misstated myself when I said a certification was a guarantee for a person to know his stuff. I should of course said "valid certification" or something like that.
With that said, NOTHING is a guarantee if you see it like that. Faked degrees, fake references, fake personality, etc.
Off Topic Folks ? Umm...
Hi.
I think it is a confidence thing.
I think you are on the right track here, but it is more subtle than this. Java has JSP, Struts and Velocity for example. It matters much more with the intefaces e.g. iterators again, method naming conventions, JDO, etc. I can read Java code straight off as it has a common style (kind of). Also interfaces are enforced in Java which helps "correctness".Quote:
Originally Posted by neil100
Until they can throw off the PHP4 engine yoke I don't think even Zend could seriously push PHP as "Enterprise". There are some disturbing reference issues (and bugs) that do anything but inspire confidence.
Perl doesn't cut it either.
yours, Marcus.
What about classic ASP? Is it enterprise technology. It's supported by Microsoft, so I assume it is. Though PHP is much faster than ASP, judging by various benchmarks.
And if ASP is enterprise technology, what about its lack of framework and standartirization?Quote:
Originally Posted by M. Johansson
ASP isn't any better for enterprise than PHP, which is exactly why Microsoft done a total revamp and came up with ASP.NET, ASP simply didn't cut it against Java when it came to enterprise applications.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mika
Yes, you'r right. Class ASP is beaten by PHP as well!Quote:
Originally Posted by neil100
Yup. ASP never had the strength to compete on a bigger scale, with Java, so MS made .NET.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mika
I have never developed at the enterprise level. But from what I have read elsewhere, PHP could make it to the enterprise, not by competing with the like of Java/.NET, but by working with them.
You know what they say: If you can't beat em, join em [img]images/smilies/wink.gif[/img]
This is evident from Zend's efforts to integrate PHP with Java. So, PHP may not turnout to be *the* solution for enterprise, but a part of it.
I love that position. "Let's let PHP do Java's work... So we can retain twice the staff, not use our existing IDE's that we used when we developed the backend and have 2 separate style/development guides"... ;)
Macromedia and BlueDragon do almost the same thing for CFML and Java/.Net...
I can see how it might make sense. Say you have a bunch of designer-oriented people who don't know Java, yet you want to deploy your intranet on J2EE. Do you use your expensive Java developers to do it when they're supposed to be helping interface your financials system to your website? Or do you give it to your web developers who don't know a lot of Java but are well up in CFML/PHP?
Or say you want to take advantage of the fact that it's much quicker to write a web application in CFML than in Java (or ASP/ASP.Net/PHP for that matter ;))
Yes it is a dumb idea from the point of view of duplicating effort. But you're not always going to be doing that. Real world example - we are close to completing a Java-based extranet which has so far taken much longer than it had any right to, mainly because of the overhead associated with developing in Java (more skilled developers, more complex environment etc). If we'd done it in a high level language like CFML or PHP, it would have been finished weeks ago. Let the Java developers worry about the business logic, and the CFML developers worry about how to drop that out onto a web page.
Of course we didn't do that, but that's another story...
Good thinking, there!
Fair enough shaun :) Still, I wouldn't call it the future of PHP :)
ColdFusion? I took a look at it some times. It's set of different tags. I don't think tham many developers like it. So I think PHP is preferable in this case. Besides, I think, it's much easier to find PHP developer rather than CFM one. And I guess, the latter will charge more.Quote:
Originally Posted by hillsy
As for PHP vs. Java vs. NET. I think it's sensible to put up some framework for this kind of work and don't use "PHP mixed up with HTML" style of coding. I always put up my framework for nearly all project I work, except those that need some updating, in this case, I have to follow its standarts, even "PHP mixed up with HTML".
I don't know much about Java. But I assume that using .NET won't be overkill. Mainly because of its separating code from content by using datagrids, repaters and so on, and by using form validating controls.
I see the point of using PHP as a frontend of enterprise applications, but I don't really see any point in using it as a frontend in instead of ASP.NEt, which is already an excellent and easy-to-use framework.
What if you do not have a Windows/IIS based web infrastructure?Quote:
Originally Posted by M. Johansson
Well, you CAN buy a web server, put Server 2003 Web on it, and use web services, but it's a rather moot point if your developers aren't trained in it, anyway. If you don't have Windows infrastructure and and/or windows developers, you probably don't want to use Windows solutions. In the same manner, if you don't have a unix infrastructure, you probably don't want to use non-unix solutions.Quote:
Originally Posted by sweatje
If the question is "why use PHP as a front end to .NET / J2EE?" reckon there's two main issues.
First there's the ease of use factor. That may be arguable vs. .NET (for me it's a static vs. dynamic, IDE vs. text editor thing), but vs. JSP I think is pretty clear that PHP is easier to prototype / develop quickly with. That's the first reason why PHP might be a preferable choice.
Second and more important, within companies there's "aggregation" of business tier systems into web based front ends which often happens over a network. In other words the server you're running your .NET business app on may be Windows (inside the private corporate network) but the system which you deploy your web front end on is a seperate server (perhaps running Unix). You may have multiple "business tier" systems, some written with Java, other's .NET etc which need to give the appearance of being integrated to an end user.
What Zend is "selling" when it talks about integration with other component frameworks is that PHP makes an excellent choice for aggregating such systems; a presentation logic tier on top of the business systems.
Still you may not be convinced but where PHP has an edge in this area is that it's very easy to modify to cope with changes. I work in this sort of environment (and I suspect Jason up there does too). Alot of what you spend your time doing is keeping pace with changes that happened to one of the many business tier systems you're aggregating.
Typically someone makes some "API breaking" change at the business tier and your web front end stops doing what it's supposed to so the "fix" has to happen fast.
At the risk of hijacking my own thread, I find this doesn't make much sense to me. I defy anyone to prove to me that PHP isn't, at its core, a template engine.Quote:
Originally Posted by neil100
Smarty, et al. are simply wrappers around what PHP already does. And as such they have never made sense to me. Everyone has opinions on this, and mine is that Smarty should never have made it into PEAR, and that the constant chatter about template engines for PHP diverts energy from making the language better. Any HTML developer that can learn the Smarty syntax can just as well learn some simple PHP syntax.
C'est la vie...
Cheers,
Keith.
My best arguments for using PHP in an enterprise environment were:
1) cross-platform (in a way that .NET is not)
2) easy to learn (in a way that Java is not, particularly if the developer has any C background)
3) allows for web, xml and database work within a Unix shell scripting environment
4) same language for Web development as Shell Scripting
...digs up an old email...edits to remove unknown acronyms :) ...
These questions went unanswered, and thus PHP became the de facto advanced scripting tool in our Unix batch job environment. By extension, developers trained in using PHP for scripting can no easily develop web pages as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by email to corporate infrastructure group
HTH
why bother to make PHP enterprisable if it will take years to come even close to J2EE .. not to mention how long would it take to be real Enterprise voodoo kind of stuff ..
my oppinion is that .,. if you want real enterprise stuff going on .. move to java or .net (although I prefer Java).. if you want simple scripting langugae powerfull enought to make something out of it .. use PHP or ASP (I prefer PHP or JSP)..
why discovering hot water if we allready discovered it ?!?!?
bye
Armando
As has already been said, Enterprise is just a cover word for adding nanny like features (protected anyone?) to a language most of the time. Enterprise development depends 75-90% on the skill of the developer, not the tools used, although they obviously do play their part.
I won't argue that ColdFusion is as popular as PHP or ASP/ASP.Net - it's clearly not. But it's a bit of a stretch to say that not many developers like it. It's the platform of choice for many developers I know ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Mika
Anyway, the ColdFusion example was just that - an example. Another instance where it makes sense to deploy a high-level language (CFML) on top of a complex framework (J2EE). Seems to me this is where they are trying to take PHP with its Java integration.
This is an excellent point. PHP is a bit like Perl (or most languages for that matter) - it's very easy to write unreadable code and there's "more than one way to do it". This was alluded to earlier in the thread. This does not play well in an - ahem - enterprise environment. A framework (or even a coding standard or some guidelines) is a prerequisite for most forms of enterprise development. Perhaps slightly more so for PHP.Quote:
As for PHP vs. Java vs. NET. I think it's sensible to put up some framework for this kind of work and don't use "PHP mixed up with HTML" style of coding.
PHP (and ColdFusion) are best at one thing - dynamic web page development. I like Harry's characterisations. Ease of use is much better than with Java. Maybe less so with regard to .Net. And the fact that your presentation layer can talk to all your disparate business logic layers, means you don't need to program your intranet in ASP, your extranet in ASP.Net but your website in JSP.
I'd actually say that enterpris development depends mostly on the project manager. And as for what you call nanny-features etc:Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl
When you are doing software development, you make mistakes. EVERY coder, no matter how good he/she is, spends the bulk of his time debugging. I think this talk like "pah, we don't need private members or IDE:s" is just mumbo-jumbo and has no connection to the real world. The truth is that things like encaspulation and IDE:s do cut down development time, no matter how good (and expensive!) your programmers and project managers are.
If you have a style guide and it's drummed in to developers then you don't need private members etc. you can work round it quite easily in your style guide e.g. private members always start with _ for example.
Like I said, having stuff like private members saves you time. You don't have to develop basic stuff like that for the style guide, and you don't have to drum it into your developers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl
You're abosultely right! Smart developer can do evrything or nearly everything!Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl
Yes, good project manager will hire proper developers ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by M. Johanssom
Hello!
In my opinion having private fields (or member visibility in general) does not make a language more enterprise ready. The coding standards for PHP are used to say that due to the lack of all private fields all class members should be treated as private. Other languages (Java, C#) support this natively, yet it can be circumvented in both cases, In PHP accessing a field directly and in other languages simply using a different visibility.
I do like PHP because for what I want to do (putting some partly dynamic webpages online) it is the best choice since its simplicity and ease of use. It allows me to get something working online really quick. I don't know how it is done with .NET (C#) but Java looked a bit "intimidating" with these XML-config files.
An official body which provides accepted certification for PHP programmers could help to advance PHP in terms of "enterprise-readiness". If a programmer says that everyone can get a certification simply by parroting the relevant books, then I would as an employer ask him, why he did not get one if it so easy. If the programmer has additional practical experience, all the better. I do agree, that a certification / diploma is not an absolute indicator of the real programmer's quality but it can be an influencing factor.
Example: The company wants to hire a new programmer. Several programmers apply for the job, some with certifications, some without. The employer has to decide which programmer to hire.
The employer faces the problem that he does not know of the programmers' real qualities who apply for the position. The job seeker has an information advantage. So the employer can conduct interviews to "screen" the potential candidates and additionally look for signs which could signal that one programmer is better than another. The employee to-be on his part could "signal" the employer his qualification by providing certificates such as a degree / diploma or a certification by an official body (preferrably the language creator itself takes on this job or authorizes a third party to be in charge of this process.
I do not know if a dynamically or statically typed language is better suited for web application however a statically typed language has advantages when it comes to IDEs. For example: In a statically typed language any argument which is passed in to the function must be of a certain datatype. Therefore the IDE "knows" which methods can be called and some errors can be spotted at compile time.
Speaking from personal experience with Eclipse (the IDE), I would say that a good IDE does indeed increase the productivity. Code Completion, ease of use when creating new classes, features to help with the documentation and providing method bodies for abstract functions are some advantages that come to my mind. And having to do this in a normal texteditor can be a tedious task.
I have found this case study by Sun on ebay's switch to J2EE and besides the usual "marketing talk" I would be interested to know if others think that PHP could meet the requirements mentioned in the case study as well.
Excellent post, Chris. Rep given.
I think, language enterpriseness depends on the support of the big companies. And in this case, ASP.NET, Java have a great advantage over PHP. I know PHP is supported by Zend. But Zend is nothing comparing to Microsoft or Sun. Support of big companies mean a good certification base (I know, it was already mentioned here), IDEs and many solutions, such as various servers and so on.
Wouldn't use Sun as a good example of good big company support for a language, they've certainly fumbled the ball many a time with Java, think the best suggestion I heard was that they give Java to IBM who seem to know how to handle it - But I get what you're saying, PHP does need to big $$$ or £££ behind it if it wants to get "noticed" in the enterprise arena.
IBM ? Now there is a business to look at when you need to know something about Java and in particular XML.
They've got just about everything sewn up and they sure know what they're doing... If only I knew someone at IBM Greenock...
I agree PHP needs some marketing done, until then some people may still shy away.
Microsoft spends millions advertising their .NET - you see it in all kinds of magazines but you never see "PHP" type ads.
Why would people buy bottled water when you can get it free in your own home? Because someone has brainwashed you into thinking their bottled water, probably from their own tap, is better ;)
Yer I've noticed that as well. That's globalisation for you as I see it IMO;
Actually, I drink bottled water because it tastes better, plus, it's convinient to pick up a bottle in town. I don't drink it at home, though. I hear it's more common in the US to drink bottled water at home, though. Do them peeps have bad water or something?Quote:
Originally Posted by ramprage
Edit - I think it was greenpeace that declared bottled water a big problem of the modern world, in that it was a huge waste of resources in transport and packaging. And people paying for an unnecessary product.
Also, I thounk you people are confusing marketing with advertising. Advertising is a subset of marketing. Marketing is much broader, and is something PHP has been doing for a long time, via the community. People are pimpin' PHP left and right, and they are not getting paid for it at all. That's most certainly marketing, too!
I also entirely disagree that a product needs any advertising whatsoever to get established. If it's superior to other product on the market, it will more often than not market itself, via word of mouth. I'm thinking about Google and Apache here, for instance.
With that said, PHP could of course do well with some corporate backing. I have not seen any figures, but I bet Linux took a big jump when IBM started pimping it on the B2B market. They did a lot of advertising, too, but the real value was that IBM held Tux under his shoulder and said "It's cool. He's with me." when he walked into the corporate club.
PHP doesn't lack advertising - it lacks trust. I think it will start to gain it when PHP 5 has had a few stable releases.
I also think it needs more standardization in general. A standard class library, a standard way of coding, a standard framework etc. Diversity is good, but in PHP:s case, it's gone way overboard. It needs some "defaults".
That's the problem with PHP, it is currently too diverse in areas and there are conflicts which cause code to possibly not run on all machines e.g. Short Tags, Register Globals, but (un)fortunately they do not want to break backwards compatability in order to tidy things up - because they will alienate a lot of users by doing so, but on the flip side there still won't be a base configuration where you can be sure all code will run.
As for advertising, you can't rely solely on a products merits to sell itself - Look at VHS and Betamax, Betamax was far superior to VHS, but VHS won because it had advertising $$$ behind it to say how "good" it was.
I'm not sure how this got so off track, but the enterprise readiness of an application, language, development environment, framework or IDE has nothing to do with it's marketing.
edit: I agree with Mattias's last paragraph, the fact of the matter is that by and large PHP encourages developers to not do things the way most corps would want, through it's open-endedness and constant changing of "the best way to do things". And that's something few enterprises will be comfortable with. Like it or hate it, having a recommended way of doing something from MS, IBM or Sun is a good thing for enterprises.
VHS won because it was easier for end users to use, cheaper to acquire and had longer running times. It won because it knew what the users in the segment it was targetting wanted.
Grrr - I'd give rep for both you and Mattias but apparently I need to "spread it around" :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeremy W.
So I'll just say that I agree wholeheartedly.
Easier to use? As far as I can remember, they all had some buttons like 'REC', 'PLAY/PAUSE', 'STOP', 'REW', 'FFWD', etc..., some timer system and that was basically it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeremy W.
And yes, VHS was cheaper, but it also was the inferior product in the line-up (Betamax, V2000 and LaserDisc):
- poorest image quality
- poorest sound quality
- poorest quality of tape and housing
- ...
And I'm quite sure it 'won' because all the porn was on VHS :lol:
The thing is 'they' dropped prices of VHS gear fairly quickly while prices of betamax and the likes stayed pretty much the same (which was quite expensive at the time). I don't think that 'it knew what the users in the targetted segment wanted', I'm afraid the users in the targetted segment simply didn't have that much of a choice (if they wanted a video recorder in the first place that is of course ;) ), as the price of the other video systems were somewhere between 1 to 3 months salary of an average desk-work(st)er in the western world...
I'm not business-headed at all (unfortunately) but maybe it has something to do with covering more market?:
You introduce a product, it works great, slowly people start buying it, you introduce a cheaper, inferior product that does practically the same at a lower price, you gradually drop that price and all of the sudden you have covered 2 different markets: the professional, and the home user.
I see that the same thing seems to have happened to CD for example, at the time it was in direct 'competition' with DAT, DAT being on the market earlier, offering digital recordings at 48Khz up to 4hours on one tape, along came CD, offering only 44.1Khz at 25% of the recording time and you couldn't record it yourself!
Still, due to keen campaigns we all believed the CD was it, we would 'never have a scratched LP ever again', we would 'enjoy the crisp sound of digital recordings in the comfort of our own living room', etc, etc...
I do have a couple of hundreds CD's, but if I can get my hands on it, I'll go for the vinyl, every day of the week and twice on sundays ;) .
Now I know that's a bit nostalgic maybe, and I do remember (vagely) Michael Douglas' shareholders speech in 'Wall street' about the old company that made the best horse whips (or something) in the world, and that you wouldn't want to be a shareholder of that company, etc...
But sometimes it just 'hurts' to see 'the big bad guy win' ;)
Apologies to all for the offtopicness of my post.
VHS was easier, as you could record more easily, record at different speeds, had more options, etc.
Beta was a better format, was more expensive, had less distribution, etc.
VHS was what people wanted. They didn't need quality, they just wanted videos.
The problem with PHP is that it's the "VHS", and it's trying to be the "Beta" in the enterprise environment (just as Beta is still the standard for TV).
As I recall it, the big stumbling block for beta was due to Sony refusing to licence the format to anyone else, whereas VHS was openly available.
Beta never went away though. Hi8 casettes use the Betamax format, as do most professional (non-digital) camera's.
Yeah. I've been an actor for various movies for TV-students, and they do indeed use beta.
I've not followed this entire discussion, just the first and (now) the last bits, so I'll apologize if I'm now off topic, but having said that.... We use PHP extensively at my job, which is one of the largest projects I've ever worked on and one of the largest MySQL installations in the world. While we're doing some rather cutting-edge things with PHP, we've certainly had no issues with it. It's definitely enterprise-ready. MySQL, on the other hand... maybe with 4.1+.
Hi brainpipe!
This is very interesting! How big is the project? How many developers are working on it? How are you working around the shortcomings of PHP4?
mySQL is OK depending on what you're doing, for instance our traffic reporting tool is storing well over 3m records at the moment and it's fine, but it's nearly all read only and no joins, which is what mySQL is good at.
I'm not sure how many people are on the project. We generate somewhere around 10 million records a day, I believe, and we don't throw away anything so it keeps growing. Personally, I don't think we should be using MySQL for this project because we do a massive amount of inserts and updates.Quote:
Originally Posted by M. Johansson
PHP really hasn't been an issue. The developers need to understand OOP and understand what that means in PHP4, but with experienced developers that's not a big issue. We've made extensive use of design patterns, which has proved immensely helpful in solving some particularly hairy problems.
Cool!
What IDE(s) are you using?
It makes me really happy to hear about huge projects being made with PHP and other OS tools. And it reconforts me beacouse i have no doubt about their potential and strength.
But people around here are really messing things up. PHP has the strength and all the things needed to be "enterprise ready", but that term, nowadays, is only marketing stuff. The real enterprise readiness has been achieved, IMO, since the first PHP4 release.
Today, to have an enterprise piece of software, you have to spend, not in coders or engineers, but in events, merchandising and dinners. As someone said, the "enterprise ready" term only means that you have enough money to back a huge ad campaign, and to buy interests and some CTOs to get the party started. I don't doubt of the power of Oracle, but have worked with a CTO that said "we need oracle, everybody is using it" without really knowing what it was, or worse, without knowing that mysql was handling the job perfectlly.
I'm not detracting "enterprise software", I've worked with some really good ones, but also with some that don't really work well, have lots of bugs or do the 50% of the work their OS counterparts do.
Sorry for such a boring post.
Again, I don't agree, for reasons already stated. ASP wasn't enterprise ready, PHP isn't, IMO, enterprise-ready.
I'll quote myself from here.
What IBM buys isn't dependent on marketing, it's dependent upon what works, fulfills a specific set of goals and will continue to even as technology evolves around it.Quote:
Enterprise Arena being generally multi-million dollar companies. Is it truly good enough for IBM to run? If not, it likely isn't Enterprise.
What goals doesn't PHP fulfill? That would be up to the corporation or enterprise itself, however for us it:
1. Didn't have enough high-end support
2. Encouraged the use of too many decentralized libraries and modules, with no quality assurance on those libraries and modules
3. Was more focussed on usability to developers than the long-term needs of a corporation
4. Had no QoS or availability guarantees, as it relied wholly on the webserver
5. Had no decent IDE's, development standards, recommended methodologies, etc. In fact, it had too many "do it how you feel like doing it" type scenarios
For most corporations, any of the above is enough to make them go running, and none of it has to do with marketing.
To say it's all marketing is to say that small, medium and large companies all have the same needs, and that PHP fulfills them all. That's patently false, each size of company will have different needs and PHP doesn't fulfill all of those because it isn't develloped with large companies in mind.
And I'm just waiting for those "oh, PHP can do that too" responses ;) I'm used to them after 2 years of debate.
I absolutelly disagree.
You are speaking about "enterpise readiness" being not a marketing issue, but backing it with only marketing issues.
First of all, IBM doesn't buy, they sell, and nowadays they're selling support for OS stuff, i wonder why? :)
Nor apache does, but it has 60% of the market share. There is no OS project with real support.. it's free software, no company backs it. But the fact that you don't pay for it, or the fact that no company backs it doesn't mean that there's no support. The OS community has proven to give one of the best supports ever. Have you ever really tryed to implement an OS solution and found that all the help you need is behind an internet connection?Quote:
1. Didn't have enough high-end support
Decentralization is one of the main OS strengths, you can see PHP as a hughe project divided into small chunks of code, all mantained by their teams. I prefer that rather than a closed product, a "nice package".Quote:
2. Encouraged the use of too many decentralized libraries and modules, with no quality assurance on those libraries and modules
What are the long terms needs of a corporation? Who develops solutions? PHP is a programming languaje, it originally was developed to achieve easy dynamic web content, it became a powerfull "toy", and now it's a strong languaje. Getting down to the level you propose, I don't see what makes it different from ASP or other languaje in facts of features. Please be more specific and enumerate some of the "long term needs of a corporation".Quote:
3. Was more focussed on usability to developers than the long-term needs of a corporation
ASP relies on IIS, JSP on an application server, Perl on the webserver of your choice, how does this make the difference? Even better, PHP (like Perl or Phyton) is still usable without a webserver FYI.Quote:
4. Had no QoS or availability guarantees, as it relied wholly on the webserver
A nice IDE is an enterprise must? Let me inform you that TACL, the rock-solid-enterprise-ready languaje used to develop almost half the banking transactional systems over the world doesn't have a nice IDE, it's awfull, vi it's the greatest tool ever compared to that. But again, FYI, php does have some nice IDEs, and some are free, but again, they aren´t included in a "nice package" all together with PHP and Apache in a CD with a hologram :)Quote:
5. Had no decent IDE's, development standards, recommended methodologies, etc. In fact, it had too many "do it how you feel like doing it" type scenarios
I'm working for a nationwide corporation coding PHP. They are in the switch from some propietary tools to OS ones beacouse they got tired of paying for nothing but problems. Paying for licenses that included support and then having to pay to consultants to solve things.
But, of course, if your idea of "enterprise ready" is to have someone to blame when things go wrong, PHP will never be ready :)
Which of the above are marketing issues? Sorry, they are technical issues mate.
We don't use Apache either, but then again Apache's only drawback is that one, PHP has many more than that one drawback.Quote:
"Nor apache does, but it has 60% of the market share."
Yeah? Ask Michael Radwin and Sterling Hughes about that. The quality of support is generally poor, the timing of support is generally sketchy. For enterprises they need better than that. For developers it's fine though.Quote:
"The OS community has proven to give one of the best supports ever."
Great. But it's also one of it's biggest weaknesses. When I need to install 15-30 different modules to make an application work, there is a serious issue with long-term viability and whether those modules will still be available.Quote:
"Decentralization is one of the main OS strengths"
I'd recommend you open the archives of the PHP forum, and see which modules were being recommended to do various tasks. Few of those are still available, and those threads are only 3-4 years old.
If you read carefully, I say ASP wasn't really enterprise ready either.Quote:
"Getting down to the level you propose, I don't see what makes it different from ASP or other languaje in facts of features."
There are big differences between PHP and J2EE/.NET in this area though [img]images/smilies/smile.gif[/img]
Yeah, ASP relies on IIS. I've already said it wasn't ready though. JSP relies on an applicatoin server, which is much different from a webserver. I never said Perl was enterprise-ready, did I? I'm not saying it's not, but for us it wouldn't have been suitable for that reason (as well as others).Quote:
"ASP relies on IIS, JSP on an application server, Perl on the webserver of your choice, how does this make the difference? "
I feel like you didn't read my post at all. I listed the reasons OUR company didn't choose PHP. I said for OTHER companies the list would likely be different and for those, PHP may be a fit, but I felt that by and large the requirements would probably disqualify PHP or, at best, mean organizations compromised on their requirements in order to choose PHP (like Yahoo did).Quote:
"A nice IDE is an enterprise must? "
Your corporation didn't switch because of problems with EVERY proprietary solution, they switched because of problems with specific solutions. Not paying for licenses, and then having to pay for consultants isn't, after all, that much different. The cost of 1 consultant for 1 day being generally more any Windows license.Quote:
"I'm working for a nationwide corporation coding PHP. They are in the switch from some propietary tools to OS ones beacouse they got tired of paying for nothing but problems."
Yeah, because I was looking for a hologram [img]images/smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]Quote:
"But again, FYI, php does have some nice IDEs, and some are free, but again, they aren´t included in a "nice package" all together with PHP and Apache in a CD with a hologram "But, of course, if your idea of "enterprise ready" is to have someone to blame when things go wrong, PHP will never be ready
Again, you are recommending other modules, other tools, which require further maintenance. To US that wasn't acceptable and was one of our oprational requirements. If you want to mock our operational requirements, feel free, but I'd think it would be responsible to actually stick to operational requirements.
I love having words put in my mouth. I also love being listened to. Maybe I'll experience that soon.Quote:
"But, of course, if your idea of "enterprise ready" is to have someone to blame when things go wrong, PHP will never be ready "
Also I'd like to add that while IBM is supporting OSS, they are doing it with the understanding of what enterprises need, they are providing the QoS, availability, etc, that organizations would require. As such, they are filling the gap in many, many ways, but not just for OSS, they are doing the same with Java as well.
Also, I should qualify my remarks. I do believe PHP is in fact enterprise-ready, but I think it's on an company-by-company level right now, where .NET/J2EE have proven themselves as being overall enterprise ready and so companies are having to do more "is this the way we want to go" than "will this function".
I got a bit carried away in my other post, sorry.
Hmm from what you've just said it seems you regard the primary reuirement of enterprise software to be centralisation of code, environment and accountability. Which pretty much ties in with your (and your employers) preference to use an all-inclusive system: Microsoft.NET. But like you say, many companies will regard the the "all Microsoft" approach with just as many misgivings as you regard "other modules, other tools, which require further maintenance".
Off Topic:
Incidentally, PHPEdit is rapidly turning into a very fine PHP IDE. The most recent versions have impressed me very much in terms of useful features and how far it's progressed from its (frankly utterly bug-ridden) beginnings. I'd even say I prefer it over the NuSphere version (and ANYTHING is preferable to Zend *spit*)...
I have no doubt that some projects are dead or have a poor support, it's part of the game. Unsupported extensions and libs are being cutted from PHP, and so are other projects doing. And this is understandable, this is free software and people have to do something for a living.Quote:
Yeah? Ask Michael Radwin and Sterling Hughes about that. The quality of support is generally poor, the timing of support is generally sketchy. For enterprises they need better than that. For developers it's fine though.
It's a bit of the above. PHP modules are being deprecated, nowadays things go into other directions. PEAR is a prove of that. What many people in this forum promote (OOP, patterns and reusability of code) goes the same way also. Modules won't vanish, but they'll start to be less used, replaced with classes and core functionalities, and with the correct implementation of PECL modules will be a good "plugin" system. PHP's development was something amazingly explosive, it grew a lot in so few time, but now it's getting stable, it will be something more ordered and less mutating in some releases, maybe that suits the "long term needs" you talked about.Quote:
I'd recommend you open the archives of the PHP forum, and see which modules were being recommended to do various tasks. Few of those are still available, and those threads are only 3-4 years old.
Of course, that's all this about. OSS doesn't have a 24x7 support structure behind a project... nor will have a full package with all the things your enterprise needs to consider it. Instead of that you have a variety of projects covering the needs, and some projects have companies giving a decent support (for a fee, of course).Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeremy W.
Ok, NP, I did too. This, in the end, is about our toughts and our ideas of what software is and what it should be.Quote:
Also, I should qualify my remarks. I do believe PHP is in fact enterprise-ready, but I think it's on an company-by-company level right now, where .NET/J2EE have proven themselves as being overall enterprise ready and so companies are having to do more "is this the way we want to go" than "will this function".
I got a bit carried away in my other post, sorry.
PHPEdit ? Umm... I would need to disagree with that. I installed the latest version on Win2000Pro the other day there and bang; Windows locked up...
Now I'm using DW MX; Still some way to go IMO ?
Jeremy W - I am wondering if your on the payroll of Microsoft by any chance ? You seam to intent on promoting .NET and Microsoft to the point of being shear ignorant of the fact that there is other alternative technology available.
The point of the alternate technology being ''enterprise ready'' is academic IMO; since no one can ever really define what exactly is ''enterprise'' - everyone has their own interpretation of this meaning...
;)
Anything else to add now huh ? :D
Maybe next time someone will actually read what I wrote:
1. PHP is probably enterprise ready
2. Enteprises define their own individual goals
I'm not even going to comment on the rest, as I covered it pretty well in previous posts. Oh, maybe I didn't because I was too biased, ignorant and closed minded. Yeah, that's it, let me retract everything and just say what people thought I said:
1. MS is the best way for everything
2. If you don't use .NET you're an idiot
3. .NET is better than everything
4. Anything Open Source is useless and crap
5. Proprietary's is by definition better than anything open source
6. PHP has nothing to offer
7. Enterprise is me. I define it all.
8. PHP's devleopment model is useless, and has nothing positive at all, in fact you're better off coding using Assembly than using PHP
Better? Now bash me.
Well dip me in ****e and roll me in chocolate ? The above I quote is the exact vibe I get from your posts.Quote:
1. MS is the best way for everything
2. If you don't use .NET you're an idiot
3. .NET is better than everything
4. Anything Open Source is useless and crap
5. Proprietary's is by definition better than anything open source
6. PHP has nothing to offer
7. Enterprise is me. I define it all.
8. PHP's devleopment model is useless, and has nothing positive at all, in fact you're better off coding using Assembly than using PHP
Okay ?
I am using build 131 of PHPEdit here.... it is the best IDE IMHO :) (the support list is shaking down 132 right now, and 133 is coming along)
Cheers,
Keith.
Well then I must have said it a hundred times then, right? I mean, because it's obviously me who's closed minded, ignorant, biased, etc, because since I believe MS will eventually save us all from every evil in the world (in fact, Bush should send MS after the terrorists, they'd fix it in minutes... well, hours as it'd take a few hours to install win2k3), it's impossible for me to have an open mind.
Perhaps, once again, people should read my posts instead of inferring what they think I mean.
PHPEdit 1.3.1 ? Umm... But are you using Win2000Pro ? If so then I could easilly assume it's my box that's acting up no ? I had no problem using an earlier version of PHPEdit on Win98 a while back...
Though personnally I didn't take to it too much - only downloaded the latest version to see if there were any improvements really ;)
Off Topic:
Using PHPEdit v1.7.132 on Win2K Pro hasn't given me a single problem so far..... Don't use 1.6 even though it IS marked as "stable". It's buggier than hell and generally not very good.Quote:
PHPEdit ? Umm... I would need to disagree with that. I installed the latest version on Win2000Pro the other day there and bang; Windows locked up...
I meant 1.7.131 :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
I use Win2k at work (with some Unix on our AIX servers thrown in for good measure - but only using telnet), WinXP Pro at home....
Cheers,
Keith.
Must be my box then folks yes ? I built the box myself about 18 months ago :) I noticed though on Win98 I installed Empire Earth first and it worked great - what a smart game btw - and then I installed it again later after an uninstallation and the damn thing doesn't work.
My box is haunted folks... Either that or I need to strip the box and begin a new build again ?
just to set things straight for ya: DW MX is not an IDE. It's not comparable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
You know this is the lamest argument that can ever be produced in a OSS debate, right?Quote:
Jeremy W - I am wondering if your on the payroll of Microsoft by any chance ? You seam to intent on promoting .NET and Microsoft to the point of being shear ignorant of the fact that there is other alternative technology available.
DW MX an IDE ? Umm... Don't recall actually that I stated that DW MX was an IDE ? I just mentioned the fact that was using DW MX correct ?
I know DW MX isn't an IDE. You know it's not an IDE; hell the whole world knows it's not an IDE...
Oh, okay then. I misunderstood - Phil said PHPEdit is turning into a fine IDE, and you said it was crashing on your system, and that you now use DW MX, which suggests that DW MX is an IDE. I just wanted to set things straight, so nobody would be confused.
None. We are discussing Zend Studio, but most of us use EditPlus and/or vim. (Also, I was wrong in my estimation of the records generated per day: it's more like 40-50 million.)Quote:
Originally Posted by M. Johansson
My two cents on the rest of this discussion: I think the answer to the entire argument, as some people here have already said or at least hinted at, is the definition of enterprise ready. The company I work for is a multi-million dollar company serving clients much, much bigger and clients much smaller. The system we've built is a replacement for and upgrade of several different applications that I think most people would call "enterprise-ready;" products from companies like Microsoft, HP, Sun, etc. Can we do it using PHP, Perl and MySQL? Yes, we can (to my surprise). Should we? I really don't think so, and most of the developers I work with don't think so either. We constantly have to make adjustments or rewrite code to deal with MySQL crashing or disappearing; to handle low-level application functionality -- essentially creating things like java beans in PHP.
So if enterprise-ready means you can make it work for enterprise systems, then yes, PHP is there. If it means ready to work for enterprise systems out-of-the-box, then no, PHP has a very long way to go. But I really don't see the point in arguing about it. Why not throw all that mental muscle around making PHP more powerful?
Once you know a language inside-out, and can call yourself (honestly) an expert, it starts to lose its luster for you. It's easy to get caught up in a language that's relatively new to you and think it's the ultimate solution. But there is no ultimate solution. PHP is a wonderful language imho, and I absolutely love it. Even so, if I were designing the system I've helped build at work, I would have chosen Java and either Postgres or Oracle for the lower-level work, and PHP for the front-end. To me, that doesn't mean PHP is somehow lesser. It's different, and I'm glad it is. Same goes for MySQL -- I'm personally kind of disappointed that they're adding all these new features in v4+, because I'm worried they'll lose what I like so much about it: pure, unadulterated speed. If I want a web site that uses a database for persistent storage, and I just want to store some preferences for my users and some content (or even a bigger CMS), I'll generally go with PHP/MySQL. Doesn't mean Java is lesser, it's just not the best tool for the job.
Excellent post, brainpipe! I see much good coming out of your presence on these forums. ;)
Good points - I would have to agree with you on the point about PHP being enterprise ready ''out of the box'';
A lot of folks shy away from having to install and configure Apache (for example) with PHP and a database simply because they have little or no experience or lack of time or in most cases just don't see the point that they should have to do this task.
ie This should automatically be done for them on a click of a button; there are some solutions around for installing the 3 (Apache, mySQL and PHP) though I've not looked at those myself so cannot comment on their effectiveness ?
I've looked at a few of the sollutions for when I can't be bothered to setup a Windows test box manually, but I'm not overly impressed, so I usually end up doing things manually anyway.
Re mySQL, at 40-50m new records per day, I'd say you're nuts using mySQL :) But you obviously think the same too.
Would like to know the number of hits on Yahoo's Databases...
That'd be interesting huh ?
It's all selects, you don't want to be creating that many records with mySQL.
SELECTS ? I know but just how many ?
Apart from maybe Google, there is no other Site that could take this kind of pounding right ? Not even IBM could come near the number of hits Yahoo has to take every day.
Well, I used to sit on a five person committee that evaluated and recommended programming languages, databases, libraries, and other development tools for a manufacturing company with $2 billion annual sales, so let me add my experience in enterprise software arena:
First, The Yahoo decision was probably as much a result of them being an Open Source shop as anything else. If they were a Microsoft shop it would have been ASP.NET. If they were a sun shop it would have been Java. If they were an anti-microsoft shop (they exist) it would have also been Java. It takes a tremendous advantage to overcome familiarity.
Second, enterprise class products come with enterprise class sales forces. For an enterprise class purchase, they will come to your office and a dog and pony show. They come in pairs: A tech guy and his pimp. They will load your data into their product and answer ignorant questions from your boss. They make everyone feel good about a purchase they were going to make anyway. When you call them and ask them a question, you get an answer back the same day. When you are unsure about their future, they hand out NDAs and setup conference call with internal developers and product managers. I doubt that Zend has this kind of sales force.
The sales force in a large purchasing decision acts as an imperfect proxy for what kind of support we think we will get after the purchase. That and free lunches!
Third, large companies can be very concerned about stability. One mission critical application we had was completely dependant on a library from a small company that went out of business around 1994. In 2000, I had to hire a contract programmer to write an assembly language patch to the binary to get it to work under MetaFrame. Yuk. I wont even talk about y2k.
Backing the wrong solution in an enterprise setting can damage your career. Experienced corporate decision makers are conservative and have a herd mentality. They like to go where everyone has already been. They have enough risk in their lives without inviting more. This is summed up in the old phrase: "nobody ever got fired for going with IBM." Its true. PHP is risky.
One of the biggest factors for evaluating a development tool is the pool of available programmers. This isn't just limited to certification. Frankly, PHP just doesn't have a good pool of enterprise class programmers. (present advanced PHP company excluded of course.:) ) My interpretation of the Zend survey is that most PHP programmers are more familiar with HTML than with transactions. I think this has to be what Sun sees in the recent PHP agreement: a source of cheaper labor.
Connectivity is a big enterprise issue. Look at all the different things that java can connect to.
The biggest things that PHP has going for it are a shallow learning curve and cheap abundant hosting (via apache). Shallow learning curve means nothing in an enterprise environment where you might have 12 people working on something for 7 years. Cheap hosting doesn't mean much when hosting is dwarfed by development costs.
Enterprise PHP is a catch 22
Look at the confusion that occurs in these forums about how to do MVC. The PHP community has not yet worked out a good set of enterprise patterns for using PHP. The catch is that until PHP gets used in more enterprises, these patterns are going to remain obscure and elusive and PHP will remain unready for the enterprise.
The best thing for enterprise PHP would be to get involved in The Middleware Company Petstore cases study.
When Microsoft first built the .NET petstore to compare .net to Java, the Java crowd laughed at them because their software wasn't constructed with enteprise patterns. Microsoft got serious and started putting work into Enterprise patterns and architecture and revamped their pet store for the enterprise.
Similarly, PHP participation in this will probably draw the same type of initial scorn from the enterprise java folks, but the process and criticism would help to focus PHP as an enterprise solution.
I might be misuderstanding you again again here, but we ar not talking installers. By saying that PHP is "not enterprise ready out of the box", he's referring to the fact that your developers have to spend a great deal of time (possibly hundreds of hours) on building a framework, so it can be used for development on a larger scale. .NET and Java already has those frameworks written.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
I'm late to this discussion, but I couldn't let this one pass (from page 4)...
The original DAT spec never allowed 4 hours of recording time. It was up to 2 hours at 44.1k, 48k and 32k. One manufacturer (Sony or Tascam, but I can't remember which) introduced a double-length 'version' which use non-linear 12-bit recording at 32kHz instead of linear 16-bit.Quote:
Originally Posted by been
Vinyl, like any medium, has its own distortions -- at least it was full-bandwidth. What amuses (and disturbs) me is that there's a whole generation of people (perhaps some of them are present here) who will never know high-fidelity sound because of MP3 and other data-compressed formats.Quote:
Still, due to keen campaigns we all believed the CD was it, we would 'never have a scratched LP ever again', we would 'enjoy the crisp sound of digital recordings in the comfort of our own living room', etc, etc...
I do have a couple of hundreds CD's, but if I can get my hands on it, I'll go for the vinyl, every day of the week and twice on sundays ;) .
What's the relevance to the current discussion? I like it when I can't hear the medium working -- that's what makes linear formats (CD, DVD-A, SACD) so appealing. Still, I have a lot of vinyl and as long as I perform the cleaning ritual every time I play one, each of my records should still perform without my awareness of their performing (surface noise, mastering compression, tape saturation from the original recording) being too obtrusive.
Similarly, I like it when I'm not aware of the mechanics of a web site -- the site just works. Whether it's CF, ASP, JSP, PHP, whatever, it doesn't matter. When the site crashes (which, in my experience seems to happen a lot with ASP apps -- YMMV), I'm out of there!
I suspect that a lot of people would gauge so-called "enterprise" applications by their reliability.
M Johansson - Misunderstood me ? Seams going by what you've posted now I've mis-understood yes ?
It happens and I can easilly admit that folks :lol: On this point, PHP is seriously hindered by the lack of a common and standard framework.
This IMO is not going to change for the forseeable future either; What I ask is what makes Java's Struts so great that everyone who develop's Java wants to use it ?
Then based on these findings cannot a PHP working group then design and develop a framework based on those findings ?
selkirk: excellent, excellent post. (can't give you rep - must spread around some more) It is great to hear your insights in this matter.
I was about to comment on the many available libraries and the missing "best practices" development approach. But you already said what I wanted to say basically.
Yer, there is a LOT of sense in that there post; For PHP it's an uphill struggle but as always, isn't it so ?
;)
I'll give you some respect instead ? ...
It seems that the big stumbling block in any kind of enterprise development of PHP is always going to be lack of leadership from the top down. Ultimatly the PHP group itself needs to recognise its shortcomings in this area and take action on its own. It seems like a lot of time has been wasted in the wrong directions (i.e, trying to emulate Perls CPAN with PEAR). Outside groups will always suffer from the problem of not being "officially recognised".
Yer, but also we need a kind of standard that all other PHP development is for the most part anyway modelled on yes ?
M Johannson was talking about frameworks... Where on this Earth is PHPs framework ?
... We don't have one is the answer of course.
We've got a few, actually, they just don't come "out-of-the-box." A lot of people like Phrame, for instance. But I think the lack of true OO support in PHP4 really hinders framework development.
PHP 5 is a lot better, though. Definetly a step in the right direction.
Lack of true OO PHP4 support ?
Umm... I'd say that what we do have we should be thankful of it and IMO it doesn't actually deter you as a developer that much from developing OO apps etc surely ?
Sure it could be better supported but that's not to say that what is there is inadequate...
Deter and deter...
It's a question about choosing the best solution. If Java, .NET or Python is better for you, you go with it.
Well that is true although some clients are just not prepared to accept the additional costs and IMO the increased development time of using Java for example, which in all reality is a far more complicated language to develop for than PHP no ?
As developer's we lay down the options; their advantages and dis-advantages; their costs etc and at the end of the day the client chooses and in my area they choose the cheapest option, ie Open Source -> PHP ?
Yes, but do you know the cost? Do you actually know what's cheaper? Seriously now. Can you, to a 50M$/year company say "PHP is going to be cheaper for you", nevermind, like in brainpipe's case, a 2B$/year company?
It's my job to make decisions that'll last, and, hopefully, decisions that won't be second-guessed every 5 minutes when I leave.
So, would PHP be cheaper than .NET in various situations? Certainly not in all. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that it would only really be cheaper if you already had PHP-ready staff on hand, and if you were already in an xNix environment and if you hadn't already invested in other infrastructure.
That would be my guess as to the situations where you could say "without even looking into it, PHP will likely be cheaper for you". In all the rest of the situations, though, you'd need to do due diligence, and I doubt that most developers even know what that is, nevermind how to do it.
J
Using PHP on an enterprise level requires MORE development time, as you must develop guidelines and framework before you can start. That means it's often more expensive to use it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
Open Source is far from always the cheapest solution, since it often require huge amount of human resources. It does save lots of money if you have lots of servers to deploy it on, though.
Open Source requires more human resources ? Umm... Yer, I can agree to that point with no problem as there is some truth in that.
As for 50$M ? The average client over hear doesn't even have a profit margin of 5$M per annum, never mind anything else :D
Very few multi-nationals in the NE over here, bar Aberdeen where you have the Oil And Gas Industry of course and even then their Web requirements are mostly dealt with by big design houses in London/whereever if you see where I'm coming from ?
Companies locally do not understand Frameworks etc etc; They are not really concerned about reaching out to someone surfing the Net over in France or Germany etc - They're more concerned about generating more business locally.
The view I have is the wider Internet community (ie Globally) is of little revelance to them ?
Certainly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeremy W.
We did just that with a $1B/year company, and that was after they'd dealt with ASP problems for over a year. They'd brought in an entire team of MS certified people from a much larger consulting company to review/log/test/debug every aspect of the system in place because it was severely underperforming.
After 6 weeks and tens of thousands of dollars just trying to pinpoint the problem, the final report was 'we don't know, but spend more money and we can probably figure it out'.
Yes, the company was grossing about $1B/year, but that doesn't mean that they were willing to put all that billion into this department (though they should have, as it was responsible for the majority of the revenue, but that's a political issue). In fact, after having redone the system in PHP, they were able to find developers who could adjust to the system (and respond to issues) faster than when the sytem was ASP based.
We went from having to maintain 8 servers down to 3, which cut their overall costs down. We got faster response times on the site pages under PHP (without a caching system).
The department we did this for was just that - a deparment, not the entire $1B/year company. Accordingly, they had a budget. The bean counters kept looking for ways to reduce costs, even though they were already pretty low with the original MS/ASP system.
As a % against gross, the entire project's costs were *very* small, and should have been given more funds. But, agains the department budget they were bigger than the company wanted, and any move to cut costs (monthly maintenance, development time, downtime, etc) were entertained.
I know the response to all this will be 'ASP != .NET', but that's all there was at the time. If they had the decision to make *today*, they might not have moved to PHP. But I think they probably would not have cared one way or another. The move to use ASP in the first place was largely one done by an outside consulting company, because this company didn't have a religious tie to one camp or another.
Actually, during our PHP development time, there was another company brought on by another department that had something like 20 full time people doing a Java project which went months and 100's of thousands over budget. It was eventually axed and that dept largely disbanded from what I remember. But that got people's attention, that a large Java project largely failed while our PHP project just kept chugging along.
That's a problem right there, if you've got 'developers' trying to do 'due diligence' on quoting/speccing a project on their own. 'Developers' should only do such things in concert with business people who can keep things in perspective. Having a coder do that sort of stuff on their own will lead to a bad experience (providing they even get the work at all).Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeremy W.
Dr Livingston, no offence, but it's not up to the company to care about frameworks, etc. It's up to the developer.
And if PHP takes more man hours, that's more money, which affects the bottom line directly.
Michael, you're right, I would say that .NET may have been a better option, but it appears that documentation and developer training may have helped as well.
After all, I have a hard time believing an app written to the exact same standard in PHP vs ASP would perform 200% better and require that much less hardware.
Well done for delivering a great product and great project, and who's to say that PHP wouldn't have been a better choice even if .NET hadn't been around.
My point was that blanket statements like "open source is cheaper" aren't accurate ina corporate environment. In fact, no statement like "x technology is cheaper" will tend to fly, because you need to do your due diligence and actually run the numbers :)
As far as your last sentence, I'm sure we can both agree it wasn't because of hte technology that the other project went over budget and over time, but because of project management. Well done to your team again!
J
First of all, and most importantly:
ASP was a horrible technology that I would not touch with a long stick, unless I was paid lots and lots of money, and I would be hestitant even then. PHP is much better. I'm so glad ASP is dying.
Now, as for PHP / Java / ASP projects - I cannot imagine that the success of a project falls or stands depending on what language you are using. If a Java project fails, and a PHP project succeeds, or the other way around, I would blame that on (really) bad developers rather than the languages. Some people just suck at what they do. ;)
Why would you have to develop a framework when there's a zillion free ones to choose from?Quote:
Originally Posted by M. Johansson
I understand how one company pushing one framework and one set of standards can lead to greater productivity.
But not having that doesn't mean you have to make your own from scratch does it?
It just means you have to decide which ones to use from the ones availble.
--ed
Ah, so now you need to figure out which framework is best (5-10 hours?), ensure it'll do what you need to (5-10 hours?), install and configure on all the servers (1-5 hours?) and then you have 2 pieces of software you need to maintain:
PHP
Framework
This will result in considerably more work in the long run than just having PHP on it's own.
The above recommendation is PHP's greatest strength and it's greatest weakness: the tendency to install a myriad of extra modules and libraries.
The long-term maintenance of those would have to be an absolute nightmare to any organization.
J
Don't worry, I completely agree. My comment was to highlight this very fact. In my experience, especially on these boards, developers feel it is their responsibility to ride the entire project lifecycle.Quote:
Originally Posted by mgkimsal
Realistically, it's rare for a developer to even choose the language, platform, framework and even OS they'd be working on in a given project, as that would be pre-decided before they even heard the project existed, at least at the level we're talking about.
J
You are right, but I would not use "just" in this sentence.Quote:
Originally Posted by coo_t2
Well,
We was talking about PHP, Java, .NET, Zend, Sun, Microsoft, classes, public and private methods, big companies support.
But we forgot that there're such case when company doesn't need a technology (it has no matter what it is, PHP or Java or .NET) but it is interedted in a product. Yes, in product not a technology but in product. They mayn't want to develop any software but they want use or at least to make some changes.
And as we know it's possible to write enterprise level applications with PHP. And they exist. And some of them have versions bundled with Apache, PHP & MySQL, I mean EZ Publish (www.ez.no), for example, they distrubute Linux and Windows bundled versions.
Not many CIOs are gonna say "gimme 200K less in my budget, thats because we'll use php and save some dosh".Quote:
Originally Posted by Viflux
AFAIK PHP does still not do transactions - correct? Until it does, it won't be being used in many enterprises, at least not those run by the same CIOs who always trundle out this bit of *wisdom* to justify huge budgets.
So "Enterprise" has not much to do with the capabailities of an App. server or language, more about how "accepted" it is in business. Frankly, the biggest impediment to PHP are PHP coders. Now don't get me wrong (I code in PHP too), I'm arguing from the CIO point of view. PHP Coder's are still seen as an unwashed horde of freshmen looking to earn some beer money on the side - and there are plenty who still fit that mould. PHP is popular, free and powerful, of course it attracts people who have just learned HTML and are moving up. The CIO nightmare is having inexperienced coders & project managers working on high profile i*net projects, that's just the kind of "business risk", i.e. "personal embarassment risk" that they are never ever gonna take.
Saying "We did this in PHP" still sounds like "We knocked this up in BASIC" or "We had this done on the cheap", which basically are arguments which do not get spoken at board meetings. PHPers need to change that bias against them in order to ultimately get more work / more money from their PHP skills.
Why has MySQL introduced certification? Its because they've realized the same thing that cisco, sun, MS, oracle and the rest realized earlier: the need customers to have faith not just in the technology, but the people implementing the technology. PHP sorely und surely needs one single authorized and accredited group of examinations leading to certification, something like:
Certified PHP Web Site Developer
(DB interaction, installation, setup, troubleshooting, programming, OO programming)
Certified PHP Solutions Architect
Same as above, plus transaction stuff, message queuing, load balancing, requirements analysis, extensions programming and so on.
Then there would at last be a solid foundation on which CIOs could build their trust, and PHP could enter areas where it traditionally has had little chance.
I love how evil us IT Directors and senior managers are. Only caring about how big our budget is in the scope of things. :rolleyes:
But many might like to play with other cool stuff with that 200k, or perhaps hire more people so they can have more staff, or whatever. They like to spend - having an extra 200k lets you engage in more spending activity.Quote:
Originally Posted by asterix
PHP has nothing to do with transactions. Those are handled by the database, of which PHP can deal with many.Quote:
AFAIK PHP does still not do transactions - correct? Until it does, it won't be being used in many enterprises, at least not those run by the same CIOs who always trundle out this bit of *wisdom* to justify huge budgets.
So they'll spend a couple million on an overpriced project that never quites get done, in which time they can move on to another company, and that's OK. But dropping $100k on a PHP prototype which doesn't do everything right on day 1 is an embarrassment they can't live with? (Seen both happen) There need to be some expectations management on both sides of the equation. Also, what happened to companies actually fostering learning and development amongst their staff (perhaps even cultivating some loyalty)? Taking people who are talented but maybe a bit raw and shaping them into 'proper developers'? Maybe it's because most managers aren't very good at that sort of thing...Quote:
So "Enterprise" has not much to do with the capabailities of an App. server or language, more about how "accepted" it is in business. Frankly, the biggest impediment to PHP are PHP coders. Now don't get me wrong (I code in PHP too), I'm arguing from the CIO point of view. PHP Coder's are still seen as an unwashed horde of freshmen looking to earn some beer money on the side - and there are plenty who still fit that mould. PHP is popular, free and powerful, of course it attracts people who have just learned HTML and are moving up. The CIO nightmare is having inexperienced coders & project managers working on high profile i*net projects, that's just the kind of "business risk", i.e. "personal embarassment risk" that they are never ever gonna take.
But part of that 'bias' stems from people thinking that PHP can't do things ('transactions'?). Letting people know that PHP is actually at the heart and center of a billion dollar operation *should* inspire some level of interest or respect from potential adopters, and not automatically make them assume that people were just doing something 'on the cheap'. One of our students came from a large newspaper organization (HUGE in the US, not sure about abroad so much - 100 dailies and about 8 million paid subscribers). About 60% of their content was touched by PHP processes somewhere along the production line. That's not peanuts, and the fact that they were bringing in outside PHP consultants and sending staff to training seemed to confirm their belief in using it long term, and that it wasn't just a 'fad' or a 'band-aid'.Quote:
Saying "We did this in PHP" still sounds like "We knocked this up in BASIC" or "We had this done on the cheap", which basically are arguments which do not get spoken at board meetings. PHPers need to change that bias against them in order to ultimately get more work / more money from their PHP skills.
Biggest problem is WHO does the certification? PHP isn't owned by one corp. We've planned on doing PHP certification, but initial feedback from potential students is that they wanted to only do things 'over the web', which defeats the purpose of 'real' certification (imo). Too many cheaters, etc. Also, the company itself. Although we've been doing training for over 2 years (http://www.tapinternet.com/php/), not many people know about us, and thus 'certification' from us may not hold much weight. But maybe it would? So, until someone can work out a certification process with a large test-taking org, it probably won't happen.Quote:
Why has MySQL introduced certification? Its because they've realized the same thing that cisco, sun, MS, oracle and the rest realized earlier: the need customers to have faith not just in the technology, but the people implementing the technology. PHP sorely und surely needs one single authorized and accredited group of examinations leading to certification, something like:
Certified PHP Web Site Developer
(DB interaction, installation, setup, troubleshooting, programming, OO programming)
Certified PHP Solutions Architect
Same as above, plus transaction stuff, message queuing, load balancing, requirements analysis, extensions programming and so on.
Then there would at last be a solid foundation on which CIOs could build their trust, and PHP could enter areas where it traditionally has had little chance.
Transactions don't necessarily have to take place in the database. Take a look at Java Transaction Service, Using CORBA transactions, Microsoft Transaction Server and CICS ("CICS can support over nine hundred thousand concurrent users" yikes!)Quote:
Originally Posted by mgkimsal
Transaction servers are only one piece of the enterprise application puzzle. There are other types of middleware like message oriented middleware, object request brokers and remote procedure calls.
"Why develop a framework when there are free ones already?" - Mainly because a lot of them are very poorly coded, they are hacked together by people in there spare time who don't have experience in developing code for the enterprise. Of course not all are like that, but the majority are.
I'm with Jeremy on the fact that one of the greatest weaknesses of PHP is the myriad of modules, take XSL for example, not a commonly installed module - now that can be a big problem for deployment (OK, not for large scale systems as you usually have control over server apps etc.), now Java on the other hand, if I had a problem of a set of classes I needed to use for XSL not being available then I'd just drop the JAR into the classpath and away we go, simple as that.
Spend? No, I don't think so (and being a CIO I am in a position to judge ;) They like Big Budgets. Give me a Budget of 2M, and I utilize 1.8M, then I save the company 10%, and use that argument to prove how cool I am & can be entrusted with more money :D . But thats a difficult game and a different topic.Quote:
Originally Posted by mgkimsal
Thats the problem. PHP doesn't AFAIK do transactions, so arguing that some other layer (vendor) should do it is shooting yourself in the foot. There are many good reasons why databases should not manage business transactions. Ever heard of two-phase commit? There is no reason why transactions shouldn't be offered by a programming language, unless you concede that the language in question is not and never will be targeted at that market. Which is why IMHO MySQL now can support transactions.Quote:
Originally Posted by mgkimsal
That's missing the point. Mentoring / Fostering / Developing PHP programmers to where exactly? With every other major web dev. language you can put a certifcate under your activities. Then you can measure success or lack of it. This is *exactly* the kind of thing managers should be good at.Quote:
Originally Posted by mgkimsal
Maybe, yes. But then again, most companies are not dot coms, innovating is what they do in the design rooms, not in their programmng pens.Quote:
Originally Posted by mgkimsal
I agree and applaud, really, that is great for the Web, PHP and eventually everybody. But I would like to see these outlyers become the median.Quote:
Originally Posted by mgkimsal
Well, for a certificationn to be recognized and gain rapid acceptance it must be from an accredited certifier. And who does the accreditation? As you say, nobody owns PHP, so nobody can accredit a certification or training vendor.Quote:
Originally Posted by mgkimsal
You only need the whole shebang if you believe that PHP should pave the way to web domination. I don't hold that view, I believe that if Rasmus or Zend or whoever started accredition schemes, then part of the appeal of PHP would die immediately. But then I accept that PHP will be at the bottom of the web language food chain, something like PHP -> Coldfusion -> ASP -> PERL -> ASP.NET -> J2EE. (And that is soleley based on the hourly rate of programmers in those languages, not the capabilities of the language).
So, to recap, PHP is not an enterprise technology (language). But who wants it to be one anyway? Isn't the top end of the market crowded anyway?
A few things.
But the "not all" includes eZ publish (which we build our apps on at work), Krysalis and Logi Create (which I have no first hand experience of). All of which are most definately are coded by experienced developers, have commercial faces and for which support can be purchased.Quote:
"Why develop a framework when there are free ones already?" - Mainly because a lot of them are very poorly coded, they are hacked together by people in there spare time who don't have experience in developing code for the enterprise. Of course not all are like that, but the majority are.
As we're talking enterprise, the necessary expertise / platform should not be an issue.Quote:
I'm with Jeremy on the fact that one of the greatest weaknesses of PHP is the myriad of modules, take XSL for example, not a commonly installed module - now that can be a big problem for deployment (OK, not for large scale systems as you usually have control over server apps etc.), now Java on the other hand, if I had a problem of a set of classes I needed to use for XSL not being available then I'd just drop the JAR into the classpath and away we go, simple as that.
Yes I see your point that Java has better standards etc. But is Java perfect? Perhaps far from it - many Java projects still fail badly although there's more than enough expertise around to prevent it.
But in this web enviroment, I still believe no one has all the right answers so choice is most definately a good thing - with PHP it's tough to decide but the end result may be a better match for your needs. eZ publish (2.x), for example, has the feel of an app that was designed by C++ coders while others like php.MVC will most definately appeal to Java coders. The prerequisite though is you have some idea of what you're doing to be able to choose in the first place...
Adding to this the question of support, are you really better off with commercial software?
Take ASP 3.0 for example - it now has no future. Given MS's record on Windows upgrades, it might be reasonable to expect they'll cut support for it at some point as well.
How do users feel about that? Companies effectively need to re-train their staff (many having originally had a background in HTML), how to step up from VBScript to a platform which is trying to compete with Java. Now that we've got past the wow effect of .NET, I wonder how many companies using ASP 3.0 are considering PHP as their future?
Overall what seems to be the conclusion of this discussion is that PHP is only "enterprise" if there's expert developers around to work with it.
But here's a question - how many web developers do you know that understand how HTTP 1.0 Cache Headers work? What about all the stuff HTTP 1.1 adds like ETags? Not knowing the answer could be costing you alot in bandwidth and server load. For a high traffic site this can be critical.
Don't look to ASP.NET or Java to solve the problem for you, by providing a friendly class to wrap the problem beyond the developers need to know about it.
Yes the @OutputControl page directive makes sending the correct HTTP headers easier but implementing HTTP client side caching successfully requires some element of building it into the application, it being the only thing that "understands" the age of the content it renders.
Web developers should know how HTTP (1.0 at least) caching works. Knowledge is prerequisite no matter what tools you're working with.
Providing the guys who work in data warehousing, who develop reports with VisualBasic, with a framework that allows them to knock up web applications is not a recipe for enterprise web sites IMO.
Just a couple of quick thoughts...
There are plenty of dumb enterprises out there. I know, I work for one. Our purchasing decisons in the web/intranet area leave me scratching my head a lot of the time - not to mention making my job harder. Point is, enterprises don't always know what's good for them. They should, but then some middle manager comes along and gets in a p*$$ing contest with another one, and before you know it process has gone out the window. In our case, shifting to an all-PHP environment would solve a lot of problems. ASP.Net would solve even more but we're in short-term cost-cutting mode right now which precludes upgrading our servers from NT4. So instead, we soldier on with a weird mix of ASP, ColdFusion Express (yes you heard right), ColdFusion 4.5, Plumtree, Domino and Zope :rolleyes:
I know this isn't how a well-run business operates, but I also know I'm far from alone.
Harry - good point about future supportability. I recently applied for a job at a very large public sector organisation that is standardising on PHP to achieve a level of vendor-independence. Good example of choosing PHP for the right reasons (I guess Java was the other candidate).
Harry,
Your dismissal of the "well, perhaps PHP does have too many things floating around" argument with "well, MS doesnt' support ASP3.0 anymore either" isn't really a valid equivalency. I think I see what you were trying to do (open source projects die, so did ASP.old), however it's not the same.
Companies had 4 years of warning before Win2K3, which is basically the "get in the right millenium" upgrade. Most companies won't even do the full 2k3 upgrade until next year (ours won't, though we'll begin with simple ones like Exchange and AD this year).
That's 5 years of notice, really, and support for ASP continues to this day, but will likely die out within 2 years of 2K3's release. That's really 6-7 years of "support", which isn't quite the same as a PHP project which just dies, and for a company (and for me as a developer and IT manager) that is a very big difference.
We've also covered the "oh, this language teaches you more about this" and "this one teaches you more about that" and "good developers should know x, y and z (at least as well as they know x)" argument many times. While it's true, good developers should know a lot of things, but the biggest thing a good developer should know is what tool is right for which job.
Personally, I like CFML better than PHP for enterprise work, as well as just for regular sites. It fulfills PHP's goal even better than PHP does: a quick and dirty site, except that it allows for a greater separation between presentation and logic, out of the box.
PHP's free, though, which is a very big plus. I still prefer CFM though, wonderful language/platform for development.
J
Think we need to start this whole discussion again beginning at this point :) Working for one too and worse the middle managers who get final say have a little knowledge (making them [i]very[i] dangerous).Quote:
There are plenty of dumb enterprises out there. I know, I work for one.
Some whining...
For example I've got one guy who's determined to get us to store some critical data with MySQL, despite the fact that everything else is stored in Oracle. He sees this as a cost saving (Oracle is expenisive you know), despite the fact we've already paid for an Oracle license and this just means adding some tables.
Next up is roughly $600,000 we're paying to buy a new Solaris cluster despite the fact we've repeatedly told "them" we just need some more processor and memory at a cost of about $20000. They're refusing to back down because in the past we've had "problems" and what do you do if you have "problems" - throw hardware at it. That saves some middle managers job for having made the "right" decision but this could kill our project, putting us way into the red next time someone looks at our turnover.
The other recent special was the guy who told our lead developer he didn't understand web services. That's despite the fact we're working with XML-RPC and SOAP to pass data around an Intranet.
Guess the point is what motivates some "enterprises", by which I mean companies with 1000+ staff and a pseudo military heirarchy, is often anything but good sense. Politics, fear and ignorance often play bigger parts. When the guy who's holding the purse has zero IT understanding, that's what you get.
Probably I'm being way too general here though.
Considering whether PHP being "enterprise ready" think it's a sliding scale which depends more on the culture of the company considering it, rather than PHP's feature set or specific technical issues.
Some companies have a culture which is open to technologies like PHP (typically ones where Perl has already made an impact) - think these are often Unix shops that have an overall view that if you want IT to work, you have to understand and "own" it yourself. So for them PHP is enterprise ready.
For others, perhaps those who believe that outsourcing is a successful model, there's a view that their IT infrastructure is somehow equivalent to the electricity or gas supply - it either works or you call the company to tell them to fix it. The culture here is to be deliberately ignorant and tell that to the supplier: "I don't care how it works. I just want it to work". For them technologies like PHP are definately a bad choice.
And there's probably a whole spectrum of cultures in between...
Hrm. Generally the (admittedly few) C-level execs I've worked with would usually prefer to spend on multiple projects to see results. Not spending for spending's sake necessarily, but if you've got extra money and other worthwhile projects to address, then do it. That's the pattern I've seen and experienced, but I'm *NOT* a CIO at a large multimillion dollar corp, so take that for what it's worth.Quote:
Originally Posted by asterix
I don't see VBScript *as a language* can support transactions - it uses an external component to manage them. And from what I recall of Java, the language itself doesn't support transactions, but uses external components.Quote:
Thats the problem. PHP doesn't AFAIK do transactions, so arguing that some other layer (vendor) should do it is shooting yourself in the foot. There are many good reasons why databases should not manage business transactions. Ever heard of two-phase commit? There is no reason why transactions shouldn't be offered by a programming language, unless you concede that the language in question is not and never will be targeted at that market. Which is why IMHO MySQL now can support transactions.
To the standards the organization would like them to be at or achieve.Quote:
That's missing the point. Mentoring / Fostering / Developing PHP programmers to where exactly?
But beyond checking if someone is up to date or not with certs, there's not much more you can do with that. I'm not saying they're completely useless, but a person can have all the certs in the world, but if they don't do things the way the company needs them done, or adheres to company standards or fails in other company-defined measures of achievement, he's failed.Quote:
With every other major web dev. language you can put a certifcate under your activities. Then you can measure success or lack of it. This is *exactly* the kind of thing managers should be good at.
Keeping the topic at least partially revolving around PHP, I'd say that most people using PHP are doing so in a web (read - 'dot com' or similar extension) environment. You can certainly be innovative in design and then implement that in PHP (or other languages).Quote:
Maybe, yes. But then again, most companies are not dot coms, innovating is what they do in the design rooms, not in their programmng pens.
Not saying it can't be done at all - it's about trust. Doesn't matter if New Horizons is 'sun certified' if no one trusts sun. Or ever better 'foobar certified', if no one has heard of foobar in that field.Quote:
Well, for a certificationn to be recognized and gain rapid acceptance it must be from an accredited certifier. And who does the accreditation? As you say, nobody owns PHP, so nobody can accredit a certification or training vendor.
Hrm. I've been banned on here for talking dollars, but you're talking relative positioning. In our experience, for the above to hold true, *every* language up there would need to command US three figures per hour then, from a consulting-shop standpoint. From 'I'm an employee someplace' that might be closer to the truth, but the PHP/CF/ASP/Perl would, in my observations, be all on the same level these days.Quote:
You only need the whole shebang if you believe that PHP should pave the way to web domination. I don't hold that view, I believe that if Rasmus or Zend or whoever started accredition schemes, then part of the appeal of PHP would die immediately. But then I accept that PHP will be at the bottom of the web language food chain, something like PHP -> Coldfusion -> ASP -> PERL -> ASP.NET -> J2EE. (And that is soleley based on the hourly rate of programmers in those languages, not the capabilities of the language).
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