RE: [WEB400] RE: PHP Support Coming for iSeries!

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My biggest issue with PHP (and other scripting languages) is this:

PHP doesn't (AFAIK) support anything like the JSP Model II architecture,
which is a completely decoupled MVC design.  It seems to me that the
idea in PHP is that a form on one PHP page is designed to be posted to
another PHP page which processes it.  This is just like JSP Model I, and
evidence shows that this architecture doesn't work well with
enterprise-level applications.

On the other hand, PHP is outstanding as a method to throw together
quick web pages.  Only Python might have a better set of library
functions available to allow you to quickly and easily build great web
sites with dynamic data (note the difference: web sites with dynamic
data are not the same as web applications).

The issue is whether or not you want to divide your web presence into
multiple segments and use different programming techniques for each.  If
forced to choose one, I would (no surprise here) choose JSP Model II,
and put up with the slightly longer development curve for simple
applications.  So the question is whether or not it makes sense to
promote web development models where different parts of the web
presences use different development strategies.

A good example of an argument "for" PHP comes from Charles Martin:
"Software engineering issues such as robustness, safety, reusability,
and portability seem far less important than time to market, speed of
implementation, and ease of maintenance. Web scripting languages such as
Tcl, Perl, and PHP seem made to order for this set of priorities." 

If your business is more worried about time to market than robustness
and safety, then scripting languages have a certain appeal.

Joe



> From: Mike Wills
> 
> I can see something else. Full intergration with your existing
> applications.
> Forget about the slow Java, use PHP as the presentation lanugage to
> interface directly to your RPG programs. PHP is much faster and easier
to
> program in than Java (arguably anyway).