php or asp.net for this?

I know there are already a million threads on php vs asp.net. My prior
experience is with asp but I am now doing a website for a company that
has given me free reign over which technology I want to use. I am
developing an online product catalogue with shopping cart etc. Here is
a partial wish list.

1)As mentioned, a shopping cart.
2)A database search feature (to search multiple fields and phrase
occurences within).
3)An admin page for the company to update, modify, and delete records.
4)An admin feature so that a product category recordset can be
downloaded to their PC in an ascii delimited format. This is because
they want to be able to tie-in to the online db to also generate a
print catalogue using Quark.

Based on some of the features desired above, I would appreciate
feedback on which development platform (asp.net vs php) would be
easier to learn/use/implement for the above.

Thanks!
Bailey--

re: php or asp.net for this?

MBS wrote:
[color=blue]
> I know there are already a million threads on php vs asp.net. My prior
> experience is with asp but I am now doing a website for a company that
> has given me free reign over which technology I want to use. I am
> developing an online product catalogue with shopping cart etc. Here is
> a partial wish list.
>[/color]
[color=blue]
> 1)As mentioned, a shopping cart.[/color]
you can use php sessions for this
[color=blue]
> 2)A database search feature (to search multiple fields and phrase
> occurences within).
> 3)An admin page for the company to update, modify, and delete records.[/color]

all standard mysql_query stuff
[color=blue]
> 4)An admin feature so that a product category recordset can be
> downloaded to their PC in an ascii delimited format. This is because
> they want to be able to tie-in to the online db to also generate a
> print catalogue using Quark.[/color]

do the mysql query - output as text/csv (in the header), which should prompt
the browser to download , and write out the query contents in csv format

[color=blue]
> Based on some of the features desired above, I would appreciate
> feedback on which development platform (asp.net vs php) would be
> easier to learn/use/implement for the above.[/color]

it'll be a learning curve for you , as you have an asp background, but the
PHP learning curve is quite shallow - you should have some sort of demo up
and running in about 2 weeks or so.

check out hotscripts.com for example php code - there's a fair number of
shopping carts and other stuff on there.

[color=blue]
> Thanks!
> Bailey--[/color]

re: php or asp.net for this?

Never use premade script as they will never fit with your website background
architecture than if you create your application yourself. Since this is a
small project, I suggest to use PHP as it's faster to write applications.
But also because it's free and easier to implement than ASP.NET + MSSQL +
Session. But since you already have a ASP background, why not stick with it
since asp is best suited for e-commerce. Most e-commerce company use MS
Server for data storing and exchange, so it more natural for asp than php to
handle data. Maybe if you give more precision on what you have and how must
you want to spend, and with what company you want to share data, maybe I
could give you a better suggestion, since ASP.NET and PHP can do both the
same thing, they just do it differently...

Savut

"kaptain kernel" <nospam@nospam.gov> wrote in message
news:400eb5f8$0$16302$afc38c87@news.easynet.co.uk. ..[color=blue]
> MBS wrote:
>[color=green]
> > I know there are already a million threads on php vs asp.net. My prior
> > experience is with asp but I am now doing a website for a company that
> > has given me free reign over which technology I want to use. I am
> > developing an online product catalogue with shopping cart etc. Here is
> > a partial wish list.
> >[/color]
>[color=green]
> > 1)As mentioned, a shopping cart.[/color]
> you can use php sessions for this
>[color=green]
> > 2)A database search feature (to search multiple fields and phrase
> > occurences within).
> > 3)An admin page for the company to update, modify, and delete records.[/color]
>
> all standard mysql_query stuff
>[color=green]
> > 4)An admin feature so that a product category recordset can be
> > downloaded to their PC in an ascii delimited format. This is because
> > they want to be able to tie-in to the online db to also generate a
> > print catalogue using Quark.[/color]
>
> do the mysql query - output as text/csv (in the header), which should[/color]
prompt[color=blue]
> the browser to download , and write out the query contents in csv format
>
>[color=green]
> > Based on some of the features desired above, I would appreciate
> > feedback on which development platform (asp.net vs php) would be
> > easier to learn/use/implement for the above.[/color]
>
> it'll be a learning curve for you , as you have an asp background, but the
> PHP learning curve is quite shallow - you should have some sort of demo up
> and running in about 2 weeks or so.
>
> check out hotscripts.com for example php code - there's a fair number of
> shopping carts and other stuff on there.
>
>[color=green]
> > Thanks!
> > Bailey--[/color]
>[/color]

re: php or asp.net for this?

"MBS" <mbstruss@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:bd9a8bf2.0401210802.77698664@posting.google.c om...[color=blue]
> I know there are already a million threads on php vs asp.net. My prior
> experience is with asp but I am now doing a website for a company that
> has given me free reign over which technology I want to use. I am
> developing an online product catalogue with shopping cart etc. Here is
> a partial wish list.
>
> 1)As mentioned, a shopping cart.
> 2)A database search feature (to search multiple fields and phrase
> occurences within).
> 3)An admin page for the company to update, modify, and delete records.
> 4)An admin feature so that a product category recordset can be
> downloaded to their PC in an ascii delimited format. This is because
> they want to be able to tie-in to the online db to also generate a
> print catalogue using Quark.
>
> Based on some of the features desired above, I would appreciate
> feedback on which development platform (asp.net vs php) would be
> easier to learn/use/implement for the above.
>
> Thanks!
> Bailey--[/color]

PHP/MySQL/Linux

--
Mike Bradley
http://www.gzentools.com -- free online php tools

re: php or asp.net for this?

"MBS" <mbstruss@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:bd9a8bf2.0401210802.77698664@posting.google.c om...[color=blue]
> I know there are already a million threads on php vs asp.net. My prior
> experience is with asp but I am now doing a website for a company that
> has given me free reign over which technology I want to use. I am
> developing an online product catalogue with shopping cart etc. Here is
> a partial wish list.
>
> 1)As mentioned, a shopping cart.
> 2)A database search feature (to search multiple fields and phrase
> occurences within).
> 3)An admin page for the company to update, modify, and delete records.
> 4)An admin feature so that a product category recordset can be
> downloaded to their PC in an ascii delimited format. This is because
> they want to be able to tie-in to the online db to also generate a
> print catalogue using Quark.
>
> Based on some of the features desired above, I would appreciate
> feedback on which development platform (asp.net vs php) would be
> easier to learn/use/implement for the above.
>
> Thanks!
> Bailey--[/color]


Aside from the excellent opportunity to learn a new language, I think you need answer a few questions:

What DB is going to be used. PHP and MySQL fit like hand in glove. If it's an Access database you will probably want to use ASP.

What is the server? If you're using IIS - you may want to stick with ASP. If it's Unix/Linux then PHP is the way to go.

Just as there are PHP scripts available, so too are ASP.

Is there a timeline involved? Yes - stick with what you know. No - have fun!

Who is going to support it in 2 years? An MS crew? Go with ASP.

Are you going to need COM support? Probably ASP.

Is there going to be a lot of uploading to the server? PHP does an excellent job handling these files. I don't know about .NET but
ASP is miserable at handling uploading files. In fact there are COM object built just for this.


Personally I think PHP is more enjoyable and faster to work with. It just "makes sense" to me. But I also don't think you should
ever force you personal preferences on a customer - it's a disservice to them - even if you do truly know better.

-CF

re: php or asp.net for this?

Thanks for the replies. As far as what server,db, and operating
system, I can host the site anywhere I want and so it is harder for me
to make a decision with all this latitude. It sounds like I may stick
with asp. However, after reading all the hype about php vs asp.net it
seemed like asp was a dead dog (or a sick dog about to die). I would
like to learn a more marketable development platform but it sounds
like it may be unecessary for this project. Any ideas on how to create
an ascii delimited dump from a web query using asp?

re: php or asp.net for this?

> I would like to learn a more marketable development platform

I don't recommend you teach yourself a language on top of a scheduled project
That is a BIG no-no.

The only time you should learn on your company's dime (time) is when they
pay for a course... You should ask them if they are willing to do this. If so go for
it. Otherwise, write the application in ASP (you know it well), and learn ASP.NET
at home. (if you plan on being any kind of marketable in the near future).

Also, you definitely should learn PHP because PHP would have been better suited
for this project. (not to take anything away from good 'ol ASP)

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~
Wil Moore III, MCP Site : www.quicksitedesign.com?em
Application Developer Site : www.digitallysmooth.com?em
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~

re: php or asp.net for this?

kaptain kernel wrote:[color=blue]
> MBS wrote:[/color]
<snip>[color=blue]
> all standard mysql_query stuff[/color]

I don't know how you can just flat out recommend MySQL for the project. Yes,
MySQL is loveable open-source free blah blah blah, but the fact remains that
compared to its commercial counterparts (Oracle, DB2, SQL Server) it is
still quite poor. It's query optimizer sucks, to be blunt, it doesn't
support all the features of SQL 99 (correlated subqueries, full transaction
support etc. [yeah, the InnoDB tables offer full ACID compliance, but as far
as using MySQL in a distributed DBMS with transaction management... forget
it.]) There's no stored procedures (a HUGE advantage in commerical DBMSs),
no triggers, no views (another very important part of SQL), etc. If this is
for a small company that's going to be low-volume, then yeah, MySQL will
probably work. If this is going to be a high-volume high-traffic mission
critical type thing, however, I would definitely not recommend MySQL. It's
just not up to the job. So before you just go and say "Yeah, MySQL", make
sure you have all the information needed to make that decision. We clearly
do not, as the OP gave no information about the project scale...

(and don't ask for benchmarks, MySQL can't run the standard benchmarks (TPC)
because they test transactions. Even if it could, it would perform poorly as
query optimization is a huge part of TPC, as are joins, parallel operations,
distributed operations etc. The benchmarks done by MySQL are extremely
minimalist, and their comparisons all are run against old versions of
Oracle, SQL Server etc, and don't test the query optimizer, or perform any
complex joins etc.)

re: php or asp.net for this?

Well, if it's marketability you're concerned with, go with ASP.NET. I don't
have any statistics, but I dare say that PHP programmers are paid on average
less than their ASP counterparts. .NET offers more upward mobility too.
Talnet in PHP probably won't take you far career-wise.

Uzytkownik "MBS" <mbstruss@bellsouth.net> napisal w wiadomosci
news:bd9a8bf2.0401211414.633bb28d@posting.google.c om...[color=blue]
> Thanks for the replies. As far as what server,db, and operating
> system, I can host the site anywhere I want and so it is harder for me
> to make a decision with all this latitude. It sounds like I may stick
> with asp. However, after reading all the hype about php vs asp.net it
> seemed like asp was a dead dog (or a sick dog about to die). I would
> like to learn a more marketable development platform but it sounds
> like it may be unecessary for this project. Any ideas on how to create
> an ascii delimited dump from a web query using asp?[/color]

re: php or asp.net for this?

Agelmar,

"Agelmar" <ifetteNOSPAM@comcast.net> kirjoitti viestissä
news:bun74i$j9ijb$1@ID-30799.news.uni-berlin.de...[color=blue]
> kaptain kernel wrote:[color=green]
> > MBS wrote:[/color]
> <snip>[color=green]
> > all standard mysql_query stuff[/color]
>
> I don't know how you can just flat out recommend MySQL for the project.[/color]
Yes,[color=blue]
> MySQL is loveable open-source free blah blah blah, but the fact remains[/color]
that[color=blue]
> compared to its commercial counterparts (Oracle, DB2, SQL Server) it is
> still quite poor. It's query optimizer sucks, to be blunt, it doesn't
> support all the features of SQL 99 (correlated subqueries,[/color]

MySQL-4.1 supports correlated subqueries:
http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Correlated_subqueries.html
[color=blue]
> full transaction
> support etc. [yeah, the InnoDB tables offer full ACID compliance, but as[/color]
far[color=blue]
> as using MySQL in a distributed DBMS with transaction management... forget
> it.])[/color]

InnoDB tables in MySQL offer full transaction support, though not the
2-phase commit required for distributed transactions. The demand for a
2-phase commit has been so low that we have delayed its implementation.
[color=blue]
> There's no stored procedures (a HUGE advantage in commerical DBMSs),[/color]

MySQL-5.0 has stored procedures:
http://www.mysql.com/downloads/mysql-5.0.html.
[color=blue]
> no triggers, no views (another very important part of SQL), etc. If this[/color]
is[color=blue]
> for a small company that's going to be low-volume, then yeah, MySQL will
> probably work. If this is going to be a high-volume high-traffic mission
> critical type thing, however, I would definitely not recommend MySQL.[/color]

Why do Yahoo! Finance and Slashdot then use MySQL for a high-volume site?
http://www.innodb.com/userstories.php
[color=blue]
> It's
> just not up to the job. So before you just go and say "Yeah, MySQL", make
> sure you have all the information needed to make that decision. We clearly
> do not, as the OP gave no information about the project scale...
>
> (and don't ask for benchmarks, MySQL can't run the standard benchmarks[/color]
(TPC)[color=blue]
> because they test transactions.[/color]

MySQL/InnoDB can well run TPC-C, which tests transactions. TPC-H does not
test transactions.

See also http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,293,00.asp, which tested
transactions. MySQL beat SQL Server, DB2, and Sybase.
[color=blue]
> Even if it could, it would perform poorly as
> query optimization is a huge part of TPC,[/color]

Query optimization is not a big part of TPC-C, which is intended to test
transactions.
[color=blue]
> as are joins, parallel operations,
> distributed operations etc. The benchmarks done by MySQL are extremely
> minimalist, and their comparisons all are run against old versions of
> Oracle, SQL Server etc, and don't test the query optimizer, or perform any
> complex joins etc.)[/color]

The eWEEK benchmark was not conducted by MySQL AB.

Best regards,

Heikki Tuuri
Innobase Oy
http://www.innodb.com
Foreign keys, transactions, and row level locking for MySQL
InnoDB Hot Backup - a hot backup tool for InnoDB which also backs up MyISAM
tables

re: php or asp.net for this?

Reply inline

Heikki Tuuri wrote:[color=blue]
> Agelmar,
>
> "Agelmar" <ifetteNOSPAM@comcast.net> kirjoitti viestissä
> news:bun74i$j9ijb$1@ID-30799.news.uni-berlin.de...[color=green]
>> kaptain kernel wrote:[color=darkred]
>>> MBS wrote:[/color]
>> <snip>[color=darkred]
>>> all standard mysql_query stuff[/color]
>>
>> I don't know how you can just flat out recommend MySQL for the
>> project. Yes, MySQL is loveable open-source free blah blah blah, but
>> the fact remains that compared to its commercial counterparts
>> (Oracle, DB2, SQL Server) it is still quite poor. It's query
>> optimizer sucks, to be blunt, it doesn't support all the features of
>> SQL 99 (correlated subqueries,[/color]
>
> MySQL-4.1 supports correlated subqueries:
> http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Correlated_subqueries.html[/color]

MySQL 4.1 is still alpha release, not production. Hence I would not
recommend it to any of my clients. I would not hesitate recommending MySQL
4.0 to my clients (or 3.23 if that's what their provider is on), but I do
not generally recommend alpha releases...
[color=blue][color=green]
>> full transaction
>> support etc. [yeah, the InnoDB tables offer full ACID compliance,
>> but as far as using MySQL in a distributed DBMS with transaction
>> management... forget it.])[/color]
>
> InnoDB tables in MySQL offer full transaction support, though not the
> 2-phase commit required for distributed transactions. The demand for a
> 2-phase commit has been so low that we have delayed its
> implementation.
>[color=green]
>> There's no stored procedures (a HUGE advantage in commerical DBMSs),[/color]
>
> MySQL-5.0 has stored procedures:
> http://www.mysql.com/downloads/mysql-5.0.html.[/color]

Development tree. Definitely not production release...
[color=blue][color=green]
>> no triggers, no views (another very important part of SQL), etc. If
>> this is for a small company that's going to be low-volume, then
>> yeah, MySQL will probably work. If this is going to be a high-volume
>> high-traffic mission critical type thing, however, I would
>> definitely not recommend MySQL.[/color]
>
> Why do Yahoo! Finance and Slashdot then use MySQL for a high-volume
> site? http://www.innodb.com/userstories.php[/color]

With all due respect, Yahoo! Finance and ./ are running relatively simple
queries. I doubt they're doing joins across 10 tables, most of it is just a
simple lookup on an articleID primary key, and I doubt they have any need of
transactions for the majority of the queries. Don't get me wrong, I love
MySQL for simple things / low to medium volume things, but there's a reason
that Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition and Microsoft SQL Server 2000
Enterprise Edition 64-bit (running on Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition
64-bit) hold the top scores on TPC-C. And TCP-W, which is a benchmark that
matches well with MySQL's typical use, is absolutely dominatd by MS SQL
Server 2000.
[color=blue][color=green]
>> It's
>> just not up to the job. So before you just go and say "Yeah, MySQL",
>> make sure you have all the information needed to make that decision.
>> We clearly do not, as the OP gave no information about the project
>> scale...
>>
>> (and don't ask for benchmarks, MySQL can't run the standard
>> benchmarks (TPC) because they test transactions.[/color]
>
> MySQL/InnoDB can well run TPC-C, which tests transactions. TPC-H does
> not test transactions.[/color]

I stand corrected.
[color=blue]
> See also http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,293,00.asp, which tested
> transactions. MySQL beat SQL Server, DB2, and Sybase.
>[color=green]
>> Even if it could, it would perform poorly as
>> query optimization is a huge part of TPC,[/color]
>
> Query optimization is not a big part of TPC-C, which is intended to
> test transactions.[/color]

Hmm... TPC-C was based on a more complex database with multiple transaction
types, was it not? While not specifically testing the query optimizer, I'd
imagine that it would still have a large effect on the result... but I could
be wrong, and will haev to look into that.
[color=blue][color=green]
>> as are joins, parallel operations,
>> distributed operations etc. The benchmarks done by MySQL are
>> extremely minimalist, and their comparisons all are run against old
>> versions of Oracle, SQL Server etc, and don't test the query
>> optimizer, or perform any complex joins etc.)[/color]
>
> The eWEEK benchmark was not conducted by MySQL AB.[/color]

Even so, the one referenced is testing old versions of other databases on
obsolete operating systems (SQL Server 7 on NT4 etc)
[color=blue]
> Best regards,
>
> Heikki Tuuri
> Innobase Oy
> http://www.innodb.com
> Foreign keys, transactions, and row level locking for MySQL
> InnoDB Hot Backup - a hot backup tool for InnoDB which also backs up
> MyISAM tables[/color]

re: php or asp.net for this?

What is funny is some people always telling PHP/MySQL/Linux without giving any reason...
We know that MS SQL Server is more powerful than MySQL, but why whould you still suggest MySQL ? PHP can run without problem on
Windows, Why Linux ? And ASP can do all what PHP do, and faster with the framework .NET why not use ASP ? Just some question that
you should explain for people here.

Savut

"CountScubula" <me@scantek.hotmail.com> wrote in message news:PszPb.14464$Rp5.10780@newssvr27.news.prodigy. com...[color=blue]
> "MBS" <mbstruss@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
> news:bd9a8bf2.0401210802.77698664@posting.google.c om...[color=green]
> > I know there are already a million threads on php vs asp.net. My prior
> > experience is with asp but I am now doing a website for a company that
> > has given me free reign over which technology I want to use. I am
> > developing an online product catalogue with shopping cart etc. Here is
> > a partial wish list.
> >
> > 1)As mentioned, a shopping cart.
> > 2)A database search feature (to search multiple fields and phrase
> > occurences within).
> > 3)An admin page for the company to update, modify, and delete records.
> > 4)An admin feature so that a product category recordset can be
> > downloaded to their PC in an ascii delimited format. This is because
> > they want to be able to tie-in to the online db to also generate a
> > print catalogue using Quark.
> >
> > Based on some of the features desired above, I would appreciate
> > feedback on which development platform (asp.net vs php) would be
> > easier to learn/use/implement for the above.
> >
> > Thanks!
> > Bailey--[/color]
>
> PHP/MySQL/Linux
>
> --
> Mike Bradley
> http://www.gzentools.com -- free online php tools
>
>[/color]