Zend readies PHP for Windows | InfoWorld | News | 2007-01-16 | By Paul Krill

Zend readies PHP for Windows | InfoWorld | News | 2007-01-16 | By Paul Krill:
"Zend readies PHP for Windows
Arrangement with Microsoft bears fruit"

Zend Technologies on Tuesday is unveiling a public beta program for Zend Core 2.0, which extends the company's PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) platform to Microsoft Windows.

The company also is introducing its new CEO, Harold Goldberg, a former BMC Software executive.

Zend and Microsoft in October announced a collaboration to boost PHP Web application deployments on the Windows platform; Tuesday's announcement is part of that arrangement.

"It is our certified version of PHP for Windows and therefore, if you want to create fast or reliable versions of PHP applications for Windows, this is the version to get," said Mark de Visser, chief marketing officer at Zend.

Running PHP on Windows has been a less-than-optimal experience thus far, de Visser said. "[PHP is] very much created for the open source world," he said.

"Now, we're creating commercial versions of PHP for the Windows platform," de Visser said.

Microsoft benefits by making its Windows platform more attractive to PHP developers, said de Visser. Zend Core 2.0 also functions with Linux and Unix. The general release is expected a couple weeks after the public beta, according to Zend.

The Zend-Microsoft alliance boosts exposure for PHP and Zend, said PHP user Ben Ramsey, an engineer at software developer Art & Logic.

"I think what's going on here is Zend, through this partnership, is sort of increasing the visibility in the Windows world for Zend, and I think also for PHP, so it's a good [move] for PHP, and it’s a good thing for Zend," Ramsey said.

However, Ramsey said he tends to use PHP with Linux or Unix. "It's just something I'm familiar with," he said.

Microsoft could not be reached for comment on Friday.

Goldberg, meanwhile, takes over for interim CEO David Banks, who came aboard after CEO Doron Gerstel departed the company seven months ago to return to Israel.

Goldberg noted PHP's open source status and cited the speed at which open source software brings changes. With commercial software, products are upgraded maybe every six to nine months, while companies like Zend are releasing products on a monthly basis, he said.

"I think there's a disruptive play going on here in software that open source has an opportunity to really add a new dimension to really help enterprise commercial accounts consume software," Goldberg said.

Zend products are offered on a commercial basis, but the company leverages open source technologies. Zend bills itself as "the PHP company."

Requirements -

Older Version of Apache that is 1.3(however It will fullfill approx all requirements) has been designed for Windows NT (4.0), Windows 2000.However you can run apache web server at Win 95 and 98 also but it has not benn tested.If you have Win NT then you should install service pack 3 or 6 because service pack 4 created known issues with TCP/IP and WinSock integrity (Windows Sockets or WinSock is TCP/IP extension to the Windows Applications Interface that allows Windows appalications to run independently of the hardware underneath. It is just like device independence that you gain with Windows garphics Program. It can run independently of your video board.) that were resolved in service pack 5 and later service packs.

Downloading Apache for Windows - If you want to get information on latest evrsion of Apache then click here.This link will give you information about current release, any other test or beta release with complete details of mirror sites and other (anonymous) FTP sites also.

But if you are interested in the source code then download binary build of Apache for windows named as apache_1_3_#-win32-src.msi or simply apache_1_3_#-win32-no_scr.msi if you do not want to do anything with source code and want faster download. But before you are ready to donload, you should have Microsoft Installer version 1.10 or more. This source code is available in the -src.msi distribution, or from the distribution directory in zip form. But in that case if you want to compile apache yourself then there is no need to install any .msi package. The .zip file contains source code only installed as an apache module. When PHP is used it inherits Apache's user permissions (typically those of the "nobody" user).But it has many effects on security and authorization. Suppose if you are using PHP to access database unless that database has built-in access control, you will have to make that database accessible for "nobody" user. This means any malicious script could access that database and can modify that also without any username and password. It is entirely possible to make the database accessible to the "nobody" user. It means any malicious script can access that database and modify also. Its not a matter that it has a username and password or not. There is also a possiblty for a web spider that it could stumble accross DBA's web page and drop all your database.You can protect against this with Apache authorization or you can design your own access model using LDAP, .htaccess files, etc. and include that code as part of your PHP scripts. Often, once security is established to the point where the php user(here we talking about apache user) has very little risk attached to it. It is proved that PHP is now prevented from writing any files to user directories, or perhaps it has been prevented from accessing or changing databases. It has equally been secured from writing good and bad files, or entering good or bad database transactions. A frequent security mistake made at this point is to allow apache root permission, or to escalate apache's abilities in some other way. Escalating the Apache's user permission to root is extremely dangerous and it can compromise whole system, so sudo,ing, chroot,ing or otherwise running as root should not be considered by those persons who are not security professional. But some simpler solutions are also available like, by using open_basedir you can control and restrict that what directories are allowed to be used for PHP. You can also set up apache-only areas, to restrict all web based ativities to unauthorised user(non user) or non-system, files.

PHP Tutorial,PHP Projects,PHP Functions Tutorial,PHP Scripts Tutorial,Projects,India

Dear All,
If you have any of problem in PHP then browse this blog.
It will fullfill your desires.
So lets start from History of PHP.

PHP was conceived sometime in the fall of 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf. Early non-released versions were used on his home page to keep track of who was looking at his online resume. The first version used by others was available sometime in early 1995 and was known as the Personal Home Page Tools. It consisted of a very simplistic parser engine that only understood a few special macros and a number of utilities that were in common use on home pages back then. A guestbook, a counter and some other stuff. The parser was rewritten in mid-1995 and named PHP/FI Version 2. The FI came from another package Rasmus had written which interpreted html form data. He combined the Personal Home Page tools scripts with the Form Interpreter and added mSQL support and PHP/FI was born. PHP/FI grew at an amazing pace and people started contributing code to it.

PHP is -----

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor is an open source server side programming language extensively used for web scripts and to process data passed via the Common Gateway Interface from HTML forms etc.

PHP can be written as scripts that reside on the server and may produce HTML output that downloads to the web browser.

Alternatively, PHP can be embedded within HTML pages that are then saved with a .php file extension. The PHP sections of the page are then parsed by the PHP engine on the server and the PHP code stripped out before the page is downloaded to the web browser

It is difficult to give any hard statistics, but it is estimated that by late 1996 PHP/FI was in use on at least 15,000 web sites around the world. By mid-1997 this number had grown to over 50,000. Mid-1997 also saw a change in the development of PHP. It changed from being Rasmus' own pet project that a handful of people had contributed to, to being a much more organized team effort. The parser was rewritten from scratch by Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans and this new parser formed the basis for PHP Version 3. A lot of the utility code from PHP/FI was ported over to PHP3 and a lot of it was completely rewritten.

PHP works with -----

If you want completely explore PHP and want good result from PHP,use LAMP(Linux,Apache,My SQL,PHP) combination.

However you can work with window but window .....

I think window is not for Developers, so friends use Linux.

You will have to install Linux(OS),Apache(Web server),My SQL(Database Language) and finally your PHP.

What is more important - all are free.

You can get Web Apache Server

My SQL Database Language and

PHP from Web scripting Language

So now lets start with Installtion of these all things.
1. Apache Installation

Installation at Window :-