What can PHP do that ASP can not?

[bigfoot]

I was asked to look into PHP. I have no clue except that it is like ASP, right? We are running IIS 5, on a Win2K Server.

Can someone kindly point me in the right direction?

Can PHP do things that ASP can not?

Thanks

 

[Bastien]

short answer no....

both are server side languages, both run almost anywhere now (ASP will require third party component to run on Unix - see chilisoft, or asp2php)

both are very powerful languages...the main downside to ASP is that all programming really makes use of COM objects which makes things a little slower (however in most cases it doesn;t really matter)

both do all sorts of stuff

what it comes down to is how comfortable you feel with the languages and most of all what language the CLIENT wants you to use. (ASP may have a few more security holes in it (typical MS product, but that will change)

Bastien

There are many ways to skin this cat,
but it still tastes like chicken

 

[sleipnir214]

PHP will do some things intrinsically that ASP will not. HTTP file uploads is one that comes to mind. ASP requires a third-party DLL to perform file uploads -- PHP has that code intrinsic to the engine.

PHP makes better use of database access libraries for some database servers. Although PHP supports ODBC, it can also natively use database server access libraries for Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL and others.

PHP is generally better documented than ASP.

PHP is platform agnostic. It'll run on a large number of libraries with a large number of web servers. ASP is available via the Sun/ChiliSoft ASP engine, but that engine, last time I looked, was incomplete. ______________________________________________________________________
TANSTAAFL!

 

[rycamor]

Remember also, that ASP itself is not a language, it is a webserver scripting interface. This means it can "host" more than one language inside, although the most common one is VBScript. Some others are JScript, Javascript, Perlscript. I'm sure it is even possible for ActiveState corporation to make PHP run as an ASP module. (They are the ones who ported Perl into this environment). There is no need for this, because PHP includes its own webserver interface.

PHP is a language created to function as a webserver module, while ASP was a system created to enable a standard language to "plug in" to a webserver. The main distinction is that PHP has been build from the ground up with webserver scripting in mind, while the other languages have not. This means it has quite a few more native functions to for web-related needs, which are often add-ons in ASP. The file upload is just one example. -------------------------------------------

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http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html)

 

[bigfoot]

WOW! Thanks a lot.

QUOTE:
the main downside to ASP is that all programming really makes use of COM objects which makes things a little slower.

Do you mean like com objects like the DLL's I have to create in VB to create a report?