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PHP vs ASP via VBScript and MYSQL

R

Randeeb

Junior Member
Boy that title's a mouthfall ain't it 😉? Here's the deal. I'm new and knowledge on the above subject is VERY limited. Basically I can script a bare bones page in html. That's the extent of my knowledge. But, I want to learn and I have ambitions. Hopefully some of you senior guys can help point me in the right direction.

What I have:
3 PII 400 / 64 MB RAM spare machines. One is running Red Hat 7.0 the other two are running win 2K

What I want:
To script a web page for work that contains various pages of content for work related "stuff". Also, I need to create a forum that my associates and I can use via the road to communicate and update a database of our existing projects. I.E. change current status of the project, timelines, resource allocation, resource validation, etc... all via the web. From what I understand...I should be able to script a database in mysql (free ware = good) and create a script via VBScript (ASP) or PHP to access and manipulate the data stored in the database.

What I need answered from you:
What method should I use - PHP or ASP?

I've heard PHP and MYSQL make a very valiant duo, but I have very little programming experience. The good thing here is that I'm not against the clock. This is a self driven effort all on my own time, so time is not an issue. I have a high degree of inclination to learn this, so a challenge won't be turned away.

Are their any good books that will help get me focused in the right direction - that are good for beginners?

I've heard that "Building your own Database Driven Website using PHP & MYSQL" and "PHP & MYSQL Web Development" are both excellent choices for beginners. Problem is, I only have enough spare $$$ for one. I don't want to go out and waste $50 on a book that I can't understand or is too vague for where I'm headed.

Is MYSQL and ASP a compitable choice or direction to pursue?

Keep in mind...I'm very new to the subject...the more resources available to me out there on the subject...the better. I really have no preference as to which I use...PHP and MYSQL via Linux apache or ASP and MYSQL via MS IIS. BUT...I will be once I go live with the final product. Currently our "network folks" do not allow any form of Linux apache on the LAN.

With that in mind...do you have any suggestions?

Before anyone asks me...no MS ACCESS. Call it personal reasons, whatever, just have a bug to learn this stuff away from the "point and click" environment. Long post...hopefully informative enough. If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read it all. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the above. Thx gents.

 
Both PHP and ASP will do what you want, MySQL is fine in any case. I'd argue for PHP because it's a) free (open-source) and b) extremely well-documented. But then again, I'm using PHP, so I might be biased, and I don't know a whole lot about ASP.

Edit: Oh and also, this will take a while. If you have programming experience, learning scripting is very easy. If you don't, it's still not hard, but it takes some time to pick up the basics. Don't expect to program a project database on the first day.
 
Can't speak for ASP, but PHP is VERY easy to learn, and VERY powerful.

I would go with PHP and MySQL.


Also, searching for PHP on google yeilds TONS of tutorials, you really don't even need to buy a book. And you coudl alsways post question here too 🙂
 
Originally posted by: Superwormy
Can't speak for ASP, but PHP is VERY easy to learn, and VERY powerful.

I would go with PHP and MySQL.


Also, searching for PHP on google yeilds TONS of tutorials, you really don't even need to buy a book. And you coudl alsways post question here too 🙂
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all totally true, php is awesome.

look 😀
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Haven't used ASP, so no comment on that.

But it's extremely easy to get going with.
I made a simple inventory database with a PHP based webinterface for work a while back, took me a whole 4 days to learn enough PHP go make it work good enoug for our purposes, and before I did this, I had very little experience with MySQL, and no experience whatsoever with PHP.
 
If you have Visual Studio.NET then I would recommend ASP.NET

I have messed with PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, and Coldfusion.

ASP.NET and PHP are my favorites. You can't go wrong with either. I just personally LOVE ASP.NET. It seriously kickass for development. I don't think PHP has any tools like Visual Studios that makes development and debugging so easy.

I don't really recommend ASP since it is just outdated now that ASP.NET has been released. I would recommend PHP before going with ASP.

Since you are new then I think that ASP.NET would also reduce the learning curve dramatically over PHP.
 
I admit that MS InterDev is very awesome for ASP, but good PHP IDEs are starting to show up here and there. 🙂 Komodo over at ActiveState is VERY nice. It's not free, but I believe you can download a trial version. PHPEdit, on the other hand, costs nothing. It's a little rough around the edges right now, but it's still really good. 😀
 
I used Kate for my small project, and of course some vi when I was too lazy to pull up Kate 😉
Works good enough for small projects.
 
Originally posted by: MSantiago
I admit that MS InterDev is very awesome for ASP, but good PHP IDEs are starting to show up here and there. 🙂 Komodo over at ActiveState is VERY nice. It's not free, but I believe you can download a trial version. PHPEdit, on the other hand, costs nothing. It's a little rough around the edges right now, but it's still really good. 😀
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If I were going to use PHP, I would definately invest in Dreamweaver MX.

I started my ASP development using Dreamweaver UltraDev(at the time you had to use a third party PHP extension). Dreamweaver MX has PHP built in now.

The drawback to Dreamweaver is the fact that it lacks the simple object/method checking and the awesome debugging tools in VS.NET. I love being able to type the name of an object and it come up with all the methods available and all I have to do is hit tab to choose one.

Hell the debugger alone in VS.NET makes it worth it in my opinion 🙂

What it all comes down to is what you are comfortable. You can't go wrong with ASP.NET or PHP. Then it is all a matter of a development environment you are comfortable in.

 
Have you considered looking at some prebuilt solutions to get you started?

The joy of Open Source, Check out

PostNuke

or

WebGUI/PlainBlack Software

Both are based on PHP/Apache/MySQL (AFAIK)

The problem with ASP/ASP.Net is it may restrict you to a windows server & IIS tho Apache has some ability to support ASP currently I believe.

Good Luck

AlricTheMad🙂
 
ASP.NET is approximately lightyears ahead of PHP in terms of ease of development. For instance:

Suppose you want to create a page that takes data and posts to itself, validates it, then stores it in a database if it's valid or returns what data was invalid with a message. In PHP, you have to code the page and its form elements. Then you go thru all the elements and name them, and set the "value=" attribute in each of them from the POST data. Then you have to write the validation code, and (the real hard part) determine where to display the message about what data is invalid. This isn't too bad for one or two pages, but try repeating the procedure for 30 or more pages and it gets to be really tiring.

In ASP.NET, you code the page and its form elements and set the runat=server attribute in each of them. This handles filling in the data in the form when you post, there's invalid data, and don't want the user to have to re-enter all the data. Then, you add validator objects to the page and attach them to specific form elements. This handles the validation of the data and the messages for invalid data. Also, you don't have to have convoluted if statements that try to detect whether there's been an error or not - if there's a validation error the page will never execute code "close" to the database code. So that's just one example... this makes it sound like one is marginally better than the other but the PHP implementation is much more prone to defects and requires much more attention to get right.

A few other nice things about ASP... it is moving more closely to "object oriented" programming, so basically you can bind server-side function calls to client-side button clicks and stuff like that (the form_reset code, and only the form_reset code, automatically executes when the "reset" button is pressed, and form_submit code, and only form_submit code, is executed when submit is pressed). It provides a few cool "client side objects" also, like to place a monthly calendar with clickable days all you have to do is place one line of html (actually xml, but who's counting?) code and handle a few events. All in all it really speeds up development by providing more functionality and changing the basic architecture of web-based programming. I'm usually not a huge MS fan but ASP.NET has made revolutionary improvements over all other web programming platforms.

MySQL and ASP.NET should have no problems playing together. Here's a link that explains how to do it...

PHP is nicer in that a bunch of functions have names that are similar to *nix system calls, like write(), open(), read(), etc. Plus with PHP you can choose your platform, server, and PHP interpreter (is that what it's called?) but if you go with AsP.NET you will probably have to use win2k/XP and IIS5.0 🙁. If ASP.NET isn't available to you I'd go with PHP over ASP, just because I like the names of the functions better and I think people in general will write better PHP code than VBScript.
 
Oh and also, PHP is free. 🙂

I'm curious, does ASP create HTML that works with every (standard comlying) user agent? Those "client side objects" sound a bit weird, how are they implemented?
 
What happens is you place an HTML (xml) tag on your page, but you prefix the name with the asp namespace: < asp:calendar />. The ASP.NET worker process examines the file and replaces those tags with html, like < table > < th > ... etc. You place them like other HTML tags (client-side) but they provide a bunch of functionality that isn't immediately apparent (objects). They are supposedly viewable by any standards-compatible browser (I haven't had any probs with IE5 & Opera 6).
 
Dreamweaver MX really has no PHP support. It was obviously designed to write ASP/ASP.NET, it's PHP support is very lacking. I use it in conjunction with Maguma Studio for PHP Lite. I liked PHPEdit but I have found it overkill for the level of projects I do. It is, however, a solid IDE....

Edit: I just also thought I'd add that I had indeed played a great deal with ASP.NET this June. I even started a project in it but I didn't like the way it 'functioned.' I was writing in C# since I know C++ well, but I just didn't like the way the controls worked. It had a lot of good going for it but a lot of its intricies I didn't like. It also required a fully-functional IDE due to the complexity of some of the controls, whereas I COULD write PHP with a simple text editor. I use and IDE to simplify things, but it isn't a requirement. ASP.NET almost requires Visual Studio or Dreamweaver to be even remotely productive.
 
Ok, I couldn't just ignore this thread, so here's my two cents/pence!

After learning HTML I started doing JavaScript, this was good grounding for when I decided to check out ASP as it got me used to scripting and programming methodology. I started learning ASP after doing quite a bit of school project work with MS Access, and discovering the way MS Access databases can interact with web interfaces (not so brilliantly I would say in hindsight...but hey, it seemed cool at the time!). This leads me to my first point (don't worry, there won't be too many)...

ASP is very Micro$oft (see that $, yep that's a part of the problem). The thing is it becomes a case part Micro$oft, all Micro$oft - nothing in between. You become tied down to their standards and ways of doing things, as they, understandably so, want you to buy their products. PHP is free, as is MySQL (but you already know that).

PHP was designed for web development, ASP on the other hand is primarily a derivative of Visual Basic (ha ha, another M$ technology!). I switched to PHP because it seemed much more powerful - which I have found it is. It is not modular like ASP e.g. it has built in upload support (ASP requires external components, or highly-complex scripts) and I have found that it works far better with MySQL than ASP does (no suprise there...you need to use ODBC drivers).

Man, I could write a whole book on this issue (aren't you glad I'm not going to 😉).

So, to conclude: PHP is open source, has a HUGE amount of documentation, has been specifically designed to work well with DBs and general web apps, runs on any server (you're not tied to, you guessed it, a M$ server like ASP is (IIS)), is simple to learn and uses programming syntax in a more similar vein to that of languages such as C (enabling you to learn for future programming development).

As far as I'm concerned PHP and MySQL is a killer combo that you should not overlook...but that's just my opinion. Have fun deciding 🙂

teknodude
 
Originally posted by: Elemental007
Dreamweaver MX really has no PHP support. It was obviously designed to write ASP/ASP.NET, it's PHP support is very lacking. I use it in conjunction with Maguma Studio for PHP Lite. I liked PHPEdit but I have found it overkill for the level of projects I do. It is, however, a solid IDE....

Edit: I just also thought I'd add that I had indeed played a great deal with ASP.NET this June. I even started a project in it but I didn't like the way it 'functioned.' I was writing in C# since I know C++ well, but I just didn't like the way the controls worked. It had a lot of good going for it but a lot of its intricies I didn't like. It also required a fully-functional IDE due to the complexity of some of the controls, whereas I COULD write PHP with a simple text editor. I use and IDE to simplify things, but it isn't a requirement. ASP.NET almost requires Visual Studio or Dreamweaver to be even remotely productive.
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I haven't developed any PHP apps since Dreamweaver MX came out. I just saw that Macromedia says PHP is supported. If PHP doesn't have much support in dreamweaver there is an extension written for UltraDev and MX that give it a lot more functionality.


teknodude,

You are coming across as a typical anti-microsoft person. I respect Elemental007 because he attacks what he doesn't like. A lot of your argument is that it is "very Microsoft". Well who cares if it is good. ASP.NET is an awesome choice and it is VERY microsoft if you go with C#.


ASP on the other hand is primarily a derivative of Visual Basic
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IMO, with ASP.NET you would be best to use C#. It is a much more robust language when compared to VB. C# is new but after using both VB and C#, I think that C# is the obvious choice for ASP.NET.


Like I have said, you can't go wrong with PHP or ASP.NET. For most people getting a Win2k box running is easy so I don't see that as a downfall for a new person. So the argument that it ties you down to a platform is true, but I don't think it is valid in this case. I think ASP.NET with IIS and Access is a great combo for a person new to it.

I am glad to see I am not the only person that doesn't care for Coldfusion 🙂

 
So the argument that it ties you down to a platform is true, but I don't think it is valid in this case. I think ASP.NET with IIS and Access is a great combo for a person new to it.

So for how much does an ASP.NET capable server (= Windows 2000/XP Professional?) sell? Is buying development tools obligatory, or can you (efficiently) use free editors? I'd say price is a large concern, especially to people who're new to this stuff, I definitely would never have started scripting if I had been required to pay ?500 up front.
I also think the argument for not restricting yourself to one platform is extremely true - especially in the case of IIS. It's by no means a coincidence that Apache is the most widely used webserver. Not to mention you're putting yourself at Microsoft's whim when it comes to the further development of the language - right now, .net is their pet project, but who knows what they'll be pushing 3 years down the road. Of course, that last thing is a bit FUD, especially since I'm not really knowledgeable about it, but I've heard of some distress by Windows programmers who claimed MS changed their pet projects to fast to adapt to.

Sorry, I'm really not trying to spread anti-MS propaganda - I like Win XP as a desktop OS, and I'm by no means in a position to either dismiss or recommend ASP.NET, but I do recommend being cautious. 🙂
 
Sorry Codewiz, I forgot to mention that I have not tried developing with ASP.NET, so I can't comment on that. Although from what I gather ASP.NET is best developed with MS software - PHP can be developed with any run-of-the-mill text editor.

Anyways, each unto their own! I respect your choices too 🙂

teknodude
 
Originally posted by: Moonbender
So the argument that it ties you down to a platform is true, but I don't think it is valid in this case. I think ASP.NET with IIS and Access is a great combo for a person new to it.

So for how much does an ASP.NET capable server (= Windows 2000/XP Professional?) sell? Is buying development tools obligatory, or can you (efficiently) use free editors? I'd say price is a large concern, especially to people who're new to this stuff, I definitely would never have started scripting if I had been required to pay ?500 up front.
I also think the argument for not restricting yourself to one platform is extremely true - especially in the case of IIS. It's by no means a coincidence that Apache is the most widely used webserver. Not to mention you're putting yourself at Microsoft's whim when it comes to the further development of the language - right now, .net is their pet project, but who knows what they'll be pushing 3 years down the road. Of course, that last thing is a bit FUD, especially since I'm not really knowledgeable about it, but I've heard of some distress by Windows programmers who claimed MS changed their pet projects to fast to adapt to.

Sorry, I'm really not trying to spread anti-MS propaganda - I like Win XP as a desktop OS, and I'm by no means in a position to either dismiss or recommend ASP.NET, but I do recommend being cautious. 🙂
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I run my IIS server on a dell optiplex 400mhz with 256MB of ram and it is fine running Windows 2000 Professional. If you download NTswitch you are no longer restricted to 10 connections. Is it a server that would hold up to lots of traffic? No but when you just want to learn something it doesn't take a top of the line server.

So pretty much any modern machine will work fine. As to Visual Studios. Most people are students around here and can get academic versions. If not then dreamweaver would work. Apache is an awesome webserver but that doesn't mean IIS can't do anything that you want especially as a hobbiest. If I were running a companies IT department then I would rather run Apache if I didn't need ASP.NET because apache is a better product IMO but for normal people it doesn't matter.

When it comes to Visual Studios the only thing that I can think of that died for microsoft is Visual J++ and that is because of the problems with Sun. That was just a stupid choice for Microsoft anyways. I don't think ASP.NET is going anywhere. Companies like Microsoft because Microsoft helps them deploy products. Does Microsoft always have the best product? No but I do think Microsoft makes companies feel all warm and fuzzy inside. That is what matters.

Once again I will say you can't go wrong with either but for ease of deployment for a new person ASP.NET is easier. As long as you have a machine running Windows 2000 Professional and Visual Studios, you don't have to do anything to install the application. It is all done for you. It is simple stupid.

I am currently setting up my Sparc Ultra5 so I can have a server running Apache as my second server. It is much more a pain in the ass than IIS is on a Win2k box 🙂

 
Originally posted by: Moonbender
Well, I thought setting up WAMP was a piece of cake, but I wouldn't even know where to start on a Sparc ... 🙂
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Well since looking for help with Solaris 9, I decided there wasn't enough user support. I just put linux on my sparc which isn't a good option but for right now it will work.

 
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