Difference between revisions of "/Introduction to PHP, XAMPP and MySQL/"

• PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor and was developed
• It is a server side scripting language i.e. the code executes in the server and generates the HTML as the outcome which is returned to the client without disclosing the underlying code.
• PHP is open source and licensed under GNU/GPL. So it is free to download, use and modify the source code.
• PHP is generally suited for developing web-applications and creating web-pages with dynamic content and can easily be embedded between HTML tags.
• Provides wide variety of database connectivity with various DBMS tools like MySQL, Oracle, DB2, SQLite, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Solid, PostgreSQL, Generic ODBC etc.
• PHP is cross platform. So it can run on most of the available operating systems like Linux/Unix, Windows and MacOS.
• More information and detailed documentation about PHP can be found on http://www.php.net/.

PHP can be used in three primary ways:

• Server-side scripting and designing dynamic web contents.
• Command-line scripting to run scripts from the command line, much like Perl, awk, or the Unix shell for system administration tasks, such as backup and log parsing.
• Full-blown, cross-platform Client-side GUI applications can be written in PHP using of PHP-GTK extension.

• MySQL is an open source, cross-platform SQL Relational database management system(RDBMS).
• It is also licensed under GNU/GPL and users can download it for no cost(except the enterprise versions) , use it and have freedom to modify the source code.
• It has become the world's most popular open source database because of its consistent fast performance, high reliability and ease of use.
• PHP has MySQL extension which makes it really easy to access data in MySQL. Queries are written in Structured Query Language(SQL).
• It runs on the machine as a server and supports many technologies other that PHP like Perl, Java, Python etc.
• Detailed documentations and reference manuals are available at http://dev.MySQL.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/index.html for further reading

• Apache is an Open source HTTP(Hypertext Transfer Protocol) web-server which is most commonly used with PHP and MySQL. Also it is a cross platform software and available for various Linux/Unix flavors, Windows and MacOS.
• Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under Apache Software Foundation.
• It incorporates various security features like SSL(Secure Socket Layer) and websites developed using PHP and MySQL can easily be hosted on Apache.
• Detailed documentation can be found at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/

• First factor is cost. PHP cost nothing. Nothing up front, nothing over the lifetime of the application, nothing when it’s over. Apache/PHP/MySQL combo runs great on cheap, low-end hardware. For non-distributive projects and personal usage MySQL licence allows its free usage fits our most of the requirements. But if you make money developing solutions that uses MySQL, consider buying an enterprise or support subscription.
• Secondly, they all are open source and follow open source licensing under GNU/GPL. That is anyone can download the source code, compile it, modify it as per his needs and use it. More information about open source can be found at www.opensource.org and www.fsf.org.
• Third factor which can make you love PHP, Apache and MySQL is the ease of use of PHP language, speed and stability. PHP is pleasingly quick in its execution specially with Apache and moreover MySQL can execute very complex queries with huge result set in very less time. And all these software are pretty reliable and stable as server needn't be rebooted often and don't crash. Also The software doesn’t change radically and incompatibly from release to release.
• If this is not enough, PHP has got numerous extensions which enables it to communicate with other programs and protocols like POP3, IMAP, LDAP etc. Also technologies from JAVA ecosystem and distributed object architecture like CORBA and COM are supported. Moreover this combination i.e. PHP, MySQL and Apache has got so much popularity because of the way they work together in an efficient manner. They are dominating the market because they have a got a strong user community and on line support via lots of documentations,forums, blogs, IRC groups and local user groups where people get together to talk about their experiences and resolve each others problems.

• First useful tool is XAMPP which stands as X for any platform(say X), A for Apache(the web server), M for MySQL(the database), P for PHP (the scripting language)and lastly P for Perl. Well there are other platform dependent variations available like WAMP(Windows, Apache,MySQL,PHP), LAMP(Linux,Apache, MySQL, PHP) and SAMP(Solaris, Apache,MySQL,PHP).
• XAMPP is developed by an open community named Apache Friends and can be downloaded from.___ and it has a web interface named PHPMyAdmin, which is mainly used for administrating the database and configuring various other services with Apache. It also has a control panel which provides various other user specific functions which we'll see as we move on.
• The main advantage of using this tool comes to picture that the user need not worry about downloading PHP, Apche and MySQL installing them individually and configuring them, which can be very much tedious for an inexperienced user. All you need is a single package of XAMPP, install it and things get ready in few click. I promise this tool will make your life easier.
• XAMPP can be downloaded from http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

• It has a Query Browser which basically provides a graphical user interface for accessing the database, carrying out queries, say for creating schema, creating table and other database transactions in a very easygoing manner.
• MySQL Administrator enables the user to perform various administrative tasks like scheduling database backup, restoring from a backup file, create database users, specify their privilege level and change permission etc. Along with these, it provides the view for performance monitoring.
• High level features like Instance Configuration, Database Account Management , Instance Variables Browsing, Log File Browsing Data Dump Export/Import can be performed very easily, which is a bit tedious task via MySQL console.
• Another important tool, though rarely used is Migration tools, which facilitates the user to transfer the database from other DBMS(like Oracle, PostGreSQL etc) to MySQL engine.
• For downloading and further knowledge about MySQL GUI Tools visit http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/gui-tools/5.0.html