Web Languages: Php Vs. Asp.net

**Miss Kelly** · 21-01-2009

Hi all,

PHP and Asp.Net both the languages are used for Website Development.
but can anybody please explain me what is the difference between PHP and Asp.net ?

Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks in Advance.

**Modifier** · 21-01-2009

ASP.NET

If you program in ASP.NET you'll typically get too responses from the other side. Either you're rich (or your company is) or you're a Microsoft lover. While the name comes from Microsoft's old ASP technology, they made a huge leap with the .NET Framework, and the CLR allows you to use other languages for back end processing: typically Visual Basic.NET or C#.

ASP.NET's strength lies in object oriented features, and it's flexibility. Because of the CLR you can have C# programmers and VB.NET programmers working on the same project, or switch languages half way through and not have to rewrite all of your old classes. The .NET class library is organized into inheritable classes based around particular tasks, such as working with XML or image manipulation, so a lot of the more common tasks have been already handled for you.

Visual Studio .NET is a massive development IDE that (as long as your computer is fast enough) will shave tons of time of your coding. It has built in debugging along with IntelliSense, which allows for auto-completion of methods and variables so you don't have to memorize everything.

On the down side, ASP.NET is expensive. One it uses tons more resources on the web server so you'll require either better server or more servers in the farm. Windows 2003 and Visual Studio .NET are pretty tough on the pocket book as well. It's extremely rare for an ASP.NET app not to be running on IIS. And if you pay attention to any of the bug reports, you'll notice that Windows and IIS have had a bit of a history with vulnerabilities being exploited.

PHP

PHP works in combination of HTML to display dynamic elements on the page. PHP only parses code within its delimiters, such as . Anything outside its delimiters is sent directly to the output and not parsed by PHP.

PHP strength lies mostly in LAMP. The LAMP architecture has become popular in the Web industry as a way of deploying inexpensive, reliable, scalable, secure web applications. PHP is commonly used as the P in this bundle alongside Linux, Apache and MySQL. PHP can be used with a large number of relational database management systems, runs on all of the most popular web servers and is available for many different operating systems. This flexibility means that PHP has a wide installation base across the Internet; over 18 million Internet domains are currently hosted on servers with PHP installed.

With PHP 5 finally came exception handling and true OOP, but it still lack namespacing to prevent class naming collisions. PHP's type checking is very loose, potentially causing problems. Another drawback is that variables in PHP are not really considered to have a type. Finally, for some reason big corporations feel that if they're not paying for something, then it's not worth buying. If that's you're company's mentality, they just need to wake up and check out all the awesome free software that's out there.

**Praetor** · 21-01-2009

PHP

PHP is a language which has been around since 1984 and powers many of the world’s websites. It is free and is known as ‘open source’ software meaning that its source code is available for download, at no cost. It widely used in conjunction with the MySQL database engine, but can be used with others such as Oracle and SQLite. PHP is generally easier to code in than ASP.NET, since it has more functions built in than its rival; however, ASP.NET has built-in AJAX functions which is something that PHP lacks. Since PHP is open source, there is a number of applications that are available for free based on it, most of these applications are commonly used and are very powerful; also, there is a greater number of community forums and blogs where you are able to find information regarding PHP since it is open source.

PHP is a dynamic language since there are several different types of database that you are able to connect to, including: MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL and in some cases, Microsoft SQL Server. You are also able to edit the source of the language if you wish to speed it up or install custom modifications so that it is able to run as per your requirements; again, this is because it is open source - although ASP.NET is a free language, it isn’t open source meaning that you are unable to edit its source.

ASP.NET

ASP.NET is a language based on classic ASP - both languages are owned and were created by Microsoft. Although it is a free language, it isn’t open source meaning that you are unable to view or edit the source code of it. Also, it is very limited in what database types you can use with it - Microsoft only invented it to work with Microsoft Access and Microsoft SQL Server databases, although developers can use it with MySQL databases with the help of third party components. Classic ASP, ASP.NET’s forefather, was created back in the mid-1990s and is the base which ASP.NET has been built on. One thing which annoys many ASP.NET developers is the fact that Microsoft is forever releasing updates to the system, and in its course, changing things along the way meaning that in some cases, developers have to keep on learning the changes as well as the new components and functions which are being added.

**Katty** · 21-01-2009

ASP.NET being object oriented is more "organized" and maintainable than scripted PHP. Besides being fully compiled, ASP.NET platform offers loads of pure OO features like inheritance, polymorphism, overloading etc. Newer versions of PHP support OOP but its very limited compared to ASP.NET.
Development in ASP.NET is becoming more and more faster thanks to integrated VS environment, great debugging support and a lot of out-of-the-box controls.
Framework Class Library (FCL) is a huge asset compared to PHPs libraries.
PHP is more hackable than ASP.NET.
PHP promotes messy code and has poor error handling capabilites.
ASP.NET offers more powerful features to control entire HTTP pipeline in its different stages using HttpModules and HttpHandlers.
ASP.NET offers different methods to store session data.
ASP.NET is more scalable than PHP.
ASP.NET is more faster than PHP.
ASP.NET will cost less in terms of hardware to support and scale an application.

**kelfro** · 21-01-2009

Well I have my opinions and you may have yours as well. But in general, PHP is cheap, secure, fast, and reliable, while ASP.NET has quicker development time and is easier due to its class library system can probably be maintained more easily. Both are great languages, and it's up to you to make the decision.

**Zecho** · 21-01-2009

COST:

ASP.NET would be hair-pulling to write in a text editor, that's why Visual Studio is so popular. With that comes costs. Visual Studio does have their free express version, which limits your options (custom functions aren't available) and slows down the experience.
PHP is very easy to use in Notepad. It's inserted directly in your HTML documents, reads from top to bottom, and functions are read just like in English.

PHP welcomes the user to use MySQL (Free) and provides functions to make it easy.
ASP.NET on the other hand pretty much guarantees more cost because MS-SQL isn't free, neither are their alternatives.

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EFFICIENCY:

When you want error-handling, or any functionality, you need an actual language like C# for ASP.NET.
PHP has it's own error-handling and library of functions.
Microsoft is either trying to make their fanbase as dumb as possible by relying on drag and drop in Visual Studio, or they realized ASP.NET is brutal without a graphics-rich IDE. Either of those is a huge downfall in my opinion.
PHP supports both procedural and OO programming.
ASP.NET forces the user to use OO.
PHP has several built-in functions for text editing, password encrypting, database connectivity. These are single line functions where most consist of one word followed by parenthesis.
ASP.NET doesn't have a rich list of functions like that.
PHP is save, upload, view. It doesn't need to compile partial files and libraries. Keeping things simple and fast is usually best.
PHP is open source, so you can take from and give back to them by using their user-contributed classes and functions, and submitting your own. PHP also updates versions frequently.
ASP.NET is Microsoft. You use their stuff, or no stuff.