SERVER SIDE TECHNOLOGIES FOR DYNAMIC WEBSITE (COMPARISON: PHP, ASP, JSP, COLDFUSION)

Today ASP, PHP, JSP and Coldfusion are used to develop real-world web sites. Each of these technologies offers powerful server-side scripting that enables you to create dynamic web pages and can be embedded into HTML.

ASP -- Microsoft's Active Server Pages is widely supported by inexpensive web hosting companies. ASP is easy for development of dynamic sites but has a big limiting factor. In a shared server environment(all but dedicated hosting and colocation), you are limited to using only VBScript for your ASP code. Web hosting companies are generally not willing to let you run your own COM objects (basically C++ programs). So you write in VBScript. While there is much you can do with VBScript, you cannot go very far. Frustrating for a software developer.

JSP (Java Server Pages)— Java Server Pages are an extension to the Java server technology that was developed by Sun. JSP contain HTML tags and special JSP elements that allow the server to insert dynamic content in the page.JSP page can contain Java code embedded in scripting elements.

PHP-- PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page and now Hypertext Preprocessor.It has origins in the C programming language. PHP is open source, runs on Unix and Windows servers. It began in 1994 as a set of Common Gateway Interface binaries written in the C programming language by the Danish/Greenlandic programmer Rasmus Lerdorf.

Coldfusion-- ColdFusion was introduced by Allaire in 1996, acquired by Macromedia in a merger in April 2001, and acquired by Adobe in December 2005. It is currently in version 7.0.1. ColdFusion was the first amongst these technologies to provide the developer the capability of creating dynamic websites that were attached to a backend database.

Performance benchmarking - PHP, ASP, JSP, Coldfusion

It is very important to bear in mind that performance and running speed of the web scripting engine must be given TOP PRIORITY. That is, how many pages per second the scripting engine can pump out to the browser clients. The greater the number of pages pumped out to clients in a given period of time, then the better and more powerful the scripting engine is.

* PHP pumped out about 47 pages/second

* Microsoft ASP pumped out about 43 pages/second

* Allaire ColdFusion pumped out about 29 pages/second

* Sun Java JSP pumped out about 13 pages/second

Whenever you design a web site, give attention to these important points:

* Speed of web scripting engine - how many pages per second it can pump out.

* KISS policy (Keep It Simple Stupid!!) - your web page should be very simple without any fancy graphics (because web users do not want to wait for long and they want the information very fast). And information they read is just plain text!!

Installation of Drupal on XAMPP server

1. Download the latest compatible copy of XAMPP and install it on your C:\ (or main) drive. It is really easy to install XAMPP.

2. Open the c:\xampp\htdocs folder and create a subfolder. For this example, we'll call it "drupal" (C:\xampp\htdocs\drupal). Download the latest copy of Drupal, and extract it into this folder. Make sure the unpacked Drupal folders and files are in the directory called "drupal" as above and are not in something like C:\xampp\htdocs\drupal\drupal-6.4.

3. Decide on a password for your administrator (root) account. Let's say you choose "sumit" (but pick something else!).

4. Copy the file "c:\xampp\htdocs\drupal\sites\default\default.settings.php" file to the same directory, and name it "settings.php". You should now have two identical files in your "c:\xampp\htdocs\drupal\sites\default" folder: one called "settings.php" and one called "default.settings.php".

5. Open the file "c:\xampp\htdocs\drupal\sites\default\settings.php" in a favorite editor such as Notepad++ or Dreamweaver (don't use Notepad or Wordpad) and modify two lines as below (but use your own password and not "sumit"). For the second line, you will have to delete the "#" (comment mark) at the beginning of the line.

....................
$db_url = 'mysql://root:sumit@localhost/drupal';
....................
$base_url = 'http://localhost/drupal';
....................

6. Browse to http://localhost/security and enter the MySQL user and passsword "root" and "sumit" (but your password, of course). Stop and restart MySQL in the XAMPP control panel (takes ten seconds).

7. Browse to http://localhost/phpmyadmin. Log in with "root" and your password. Don't do anything except create a new database, for this example we'll call it "drupal". Type "drupal" (without the " marks!) in the box marked "Create new database" and click on the button "Create" just to the right of it. You should get a screen confirming the database has been created.

8. Browse to http://localhost/drupal/install.php and follow the simple instructions and you will have installed Drupal.