Enterprise PHP

[M. Johansson]

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".

[Karl]

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.

[Jeremy W.]

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.

[Jeremy W.]

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.

[hillsy]

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.

Grrr - I'd give rep for both you and Mattias but apparently I need to "spread it around"

So I'll just say that I agree wholeheartedly.

[been]

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.

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.
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
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.

[Jeremy W.]

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).

[Phil.Roberts]

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.

[M. Johansson]

Yeah. I've been an actor for various movies for TV-students, and they do indeed use beta.

[brainpipe]

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+.

[M. Johansson]

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?

[Karl]

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.

[brainpipe]

How big is the project? How many developers are working on it? How are you working around the shortcomings of PHP4?

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.

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.

[M. Johansson]

Cool!
What IDE(s) are you using?

[chubu]

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.

[Jeremy W.]

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.

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 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.

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.

[Jeremy W.]

And I'm just waiting for those "oh, PHP can do that too" responses I'm used to them after 2 years of debate.

[chubu]

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?

1. Didn't have enough high-end support

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?

2. Encouraged the use of too many decentralized libraries and modules, with no quality assurance on those libraries and modules

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".

3. Was more focussed on usability to developers than the long-term needs of a corporation

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".

4. Had no QoS or availability guarantees, as it relied wholly on the webserver

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.

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

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

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

[Jeremy W.]

Which of the above are marketing issues? Sorry, they are technical issues mate.

"Nor apache does, but it has 60% of the market share."

We don't use Apache either, but then again Apache's only drawback is that one, PHP has many more than that one drawback.

"The OS community has proven to give one of the best supports ever."

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.

"Decentralization is one of the main OS strengths"

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.

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.

"Getting down to the level you propose, I don't see what makes it different from ASP or other languaje in facts of features."

If you read carefully, I say ASP wasn't really enterprise ready either.

There are big differences between PHP and J2EE/.NET in this area though [img]images/smilies/smile.gif[/img]

"ASP relies on IIS, JSP on an application server, Perl on the webserver of your choice, how does this make the difference? "

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).

"A nice IDE is an enterprise must? "

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).

"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."

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.

"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

Yeah, because I was looking for a hologram [img]images/smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]

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.

"But, of course, if your idea of "enterprise ready" is to have someone to blame when things go wrong, PHP will never be ready "

I love having words put in my mouth. I also love being listened to. Maybe I'll experience that soon.

[Jeremy W.]

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.

[Jeremy W.]

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.

[Phil.Roberts]

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*)...

[chubu]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

[Dr Livingston]

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 ?

[Jeremy W.]

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.