PHP

PHP (acronym for "PHP Hypertext Preprocessor") is an open-source server-side scripting language. It was designed for web development, but it can also be used for desktop applications.

Advantages

  • Has a large community and many scripts and libraries are available on the Internet
  • Runs on many platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X)
  • Compatible with most of the web servers (Apache, IIS, nginx)
  • It is open source, so bugs can be quickly found and fixed
  • Has support for custom extensions, that can be written in C or C++ (in order to improve performance in critical areas)

Disadvantages

  • It is open source, so if there are any bugs in the code, they can be used to exploit the weaknesses
  • Not enough support for desktop applications

Components

  • HTTP authentication
  • Supports Cookies
  • Supports Sessions
  • Handles file uploads
  • Connection handling
  • Persistent Database Connections

Development tools

  • Eclipse
  • NetBeans
  • Zend Studio
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