web programming

I too use PHP and PostgreSQL for %90 of my web programming projects (C
for the other %10)... I find the embedded nature of PHP to aide in
development more than anything (though I suppose you can get that from
mod_perl as well).. I don't do much Perl at all, I found the language to be
sloppy and very messy (I'm a pretty 'neat' programmer I guess) I liked PHP's
structure and flow.. I shouldn't trash Perl as I don't know it very well at
all, I know enough to know that I don't want to know any more :-)

I've always found PHP to be as fast as I've ever needed and some of the
applications I've written get many thousands of hits a day on (at best)
mediocre hardware..

Use what you like best as most languages (especially PHP, Perl and C)
are all very capable web programming languages, it comes down to programmer
preference I suppose..

Good luck!

-Mitch

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michelle Murrain" <mpm@norwottuck.com>
To: <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2000 6:15 PM
Subject: [GENERAL] web programming

On Mon, Sep 25, 2000 at 09:15:53PM -0400, Michelle Murrain wrote:

1) I'm getting better and better at perl - and it's a much more
mature language than php.

I've used perl just as a sysadmin till now, but I'm learning DBI/mod_perl
at the moment.

I found that they are very powerfull tools; the DBI is quite easy but
mod_perl not, you have to read lots of docs and do some practise.
The fact that php is an embedded language may be things easy
at the beginning, but mod_perl give you a better control over
the Apache. (But in fact I know just some basics about PHP).

So what's your favorite web programming language to use with
postgres, and why? Are there speed/performance issues I should think

mod_perl is known to be very fast, in fact it do not need to parse
file to find the code, by the way when a script has been compiled
it is kept in memory. On the other hand it needs lot of memory.

about? I'm also beginning to get into XML, so there is another set of
things to think about.

There are CPAN modules to parse then as input, and, while XML is
all text pile is very easy to create and manipulate with perl.

--
Ciao, Maurizio.

I've been using PostgreSQL with Lutris Enhydra for my web apps and am quite
happy with the combination. Enhydra is open source and Java-based. One of its
centerpiece components is XMLC -- an XML compiler.

For more info on Enhydra itself, see: http://www.enhydra.org/software/enhydra

For a quick tutorial to get it up and running with PostgreSQL see:
http://www.enhydra.org/software/documentation/enhydra/NewApp-DODS-Tutorial-PGSQL.html

When the time comes to revamp the perl/CGI apps I developed before Enhydra I'll
very likely port them over as well.

HTH,
Jim
--

Michelle Murrain wrote:

Zope. http://www.zope.org

Been using PostgreSQL behind Zope for a couple of sites for over 8
months now and it has been a pleasure.

Cheers,
J

At 9:15 PM -0400 9/25/2000, Michelle Murrain wrote:

I use PHP with my Postgresql and haven't hit a limitation yet.

As far as perl goes, I know some web develoeprs for a consulting firm that
use Solaris and they are pretty tight in the industry. Their advice to me
was that if I already don't know Perl, don't learn it. They said to take
the Java route. They also were fond of PHP. In a nutshell, they said Java
will phase out most large perl implementations (new clients tend to be
developed in java, old code is redone, etc.)

As for me, I was thinking about trying java server pages, just for the fact
that you can technically use Java for every level of development.

Adam Lang
Systems Engineer
Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michelle Murrain" <mpm@norwottuck.com>
To: <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2000 9:15 PM
Subject: [GENERAL] web programming

On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, J. Atwood wrote:

Zope. http://www.zope.org

Been using PostgreSQL behind Zope for a couple of sites for over 8
months now and it has been a pleasure.

Cheers,
J

Hi J and Michelle.

I'm curious to try this also - I have a friend who has done alot
of work with Zope/Pg and so I have been looking over his shoulder
for awhile...I'd like to have a go myself.

I have written a slew of applications for my company's Intranet in
perl/CGI/DBI. This is also a high octane solution. Of course I am
a perl fanatic (it's like C for those of us with severe time constraints
and limited abilities ;-)

My src is public domain but not yet ready for prime time (too few comments
and too many mistakes, sloppy coding). I would send a sample tho if
you (Michelle) were interested.

Ciao,
Tom

At 9:15 PM -0400 9/25/2000, Michelle Murrain wrote:

Hi folks,

I thought (now that I've solved my DBD::Pg problem) that I'd ask a
fairly generic opinion question. I've been working with postgres and
php now for about 4 years, quite heavily in the last year. I'm sold
on postgres, and will continue to use it unless I have compelling
reasons not to. But I'm debating about continuing development using
php.

1) I'm getting better and better at perl - and it's a much more
mature language than php.

2) I've been learning a bit about jsp and java servlets - and that's
intriguing me a lot.

So what's your favorite web programming language to use with
postgres, and why? Are there speed/performance issues I should think
about? I'm also beginning to get into XML, so there is another set
of things to think about.

Thanks!

Michelle
-------------------------------------------
Michelle Murrain, Ph.D.
President, Norwottuck Technology Resources
mpm@norwottuck.com www.norwottuck.com

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On Mon, 25 Sep 2000, Michelle Murrain wrote:

Hi folks,

I thought (now that I've solved my DBD::Pg problem) that I'd ask a
fairly generic opinion question. I've been working with postgres and
php now for about 4 years, quite heavily in the last year. I'm sold
on postgres, and will continue to use it unless I have compelling
reasons not to. But I'm debating about continuing development using
php.

1) I'm getting better and better at perl - and it's a much more
mature language than php.

2) I've been learning a bit about jsp and java servlets - and that's
intriguing me a lot.

So what's your favorite web programming language to use with
postgres, and why? Are there speed/performance issues I should think
about? I'm also beginning to get into XML, so there is another set of
things to think about.

I prefer PHP, and a close second is C. What's nice about PHP is you
can come in and out of it as needed to add your javascript or just
straight HTML and it's seemless (yes, you can use echo or print statements
to do this, but sometimes it's easier not to). I can also use or not
use the database and it's not visable to the visitor. I did the entire
Pop4 Networking site (http://www.pop4.net) in PHP and it's saved alot of
needless CGI calls. There will be some PHP included in the PostgreSQL
website in the not too distant future as well.

Vince.
--
==========================================================================
Vince Vielhaber -- KA8CSH email: vev@michvhf.com http://www.pop4.net
128K ISDN from $22.00/mo - 56K Dialup from $16.00/mo at Pop4 Networking
Online Campground Directory http://www.camping-usa.com
Online Giftshop Superstore http://www.cloudninegifts.com
==========================================================================

1) I'm getting better and better at perl - and it's a much more
mature language than php.

To say the least :). If you like the php (or cold fusion, etc..)
way of embedding the script in the HTML try mason (perl modules):

http://www.masonhq.com/

It can take advantage of mod_perl if you're using Apache. This makes
it very fast.
--
matthew rice <matt@starnix.com> starnix inc.
tollfree: 1-87-pro-linux thornhill, ontario, canada
http://www.starnix.com professional linux services & products

I have to say that JSP/J2EE can't be beat (having used CF, ASP, Perl etc).

That said, the Postgres SQL JDBC driver seems very buggy.

Mike

I have to say that JSP/J2EE can't be beat (having used CF, ASP, Perl etc).

That said, the Postgres SQL JDBC driver seems very buggy.

Mike

We have been using JSP/J2EE with PostgreSQL for around a year now on
multiple projects. It is my opinion that J2EE is the most robust programming
model for web development. I would qualify this by saying that for simpler
web applications, J2EE can be overkill, and scripted solutions such as PHP
are much faster and easier to use. Different tools for different situations.

The PostgreSQL JDBC driver is a VERY important to our work. I think the work
that has been done so far is good, but it seems that there is still a lot of
confusion over versions, where to get the driver, and the status of current
bugs (such as the Timestamp issue). I would like to see the JDBC driver get
more priority, because I think it is critical to a lot of developers out
there.

- Adam

-------------------
Adam Rossi
President, PlatinumSolutions, Inc.
adam.rossi@platinumsolutions.com
http://www.platinumsolutions.com
P.O. Box 31 Oakton, VA 22124
PH: 703.352.8576 FAX: 703.352.8577

At 10:40 AM -0400 9/26/00, Matthew Rice wrote:

1) I'm getting better and better at perl - and it's a much more
mature language than php.

To say the least :). If you like the php (or cold fusion, etc..)
way of embedding the script in the HTML try mason (perl modules):

http://www.masonhq.com/

It can take advantage of mod_perl if you're using Apache. This makes
it very fast.

Which does bring me to speed/performance issues:

- is there any data on a comparison between php and cgi/perl and/or mod_perl?
(any in particular relating to DB queries? And, does reducing cgi
calls increase performance?)

- is it fairly well established that using server-side java is faster
than either of these other methods? Are there any other things that
server-side java gives you (power, flexibility) that php or perl
can't?

I know this all may largely be based on anecdotal experience.

I am fascinated by how many different methods folks are using - and
how many different options there are. I noticed no one has mentioned
ColdFusion. (I imagine it's the natural open-source bias here - I
certainly have one.)

Thanks for any insights - and thanks for the points of view - very interesting!

Michelle
-------------------------------------------
Michelle Murrain, Ph.D.
President, Norwottuck Technology Resources
mpm@norwottuck.com www.norwottuck.com

FWIW, a few random notes:

when using mod_perl with apache, you can take advantage
of the Apache::DBI module, which pools database connections.

last january, we did a benchmark of mod_perl for a specific
job and were able to get around 50 concurrent connections
per second averaged across 11 servers (each server was
running a copy of the script). since we exceeded our benchmark
we didn't push it to see wht the limit was. the machines
were linux (rh 6) boxes, dual pIII, with a lot of memory (can't
recall exact amt). the script itself grabbed some info
from a web page (i don't think it used CGI.pm) and wrote it
to a file on the local machine.

using mod_perl, you have a complete interface to the webserver's
API, allowing you to do very sophisticated programming with
the advantages of a high level language.

the readability of a program written in perl, often described
as a "write-only" language, is really more about the person
writing the code. if the person writing is scatterbrained,
you'll have scatterbrained code. one can write very structured
and organized code in perl, that is very efficienct and very powerful.

however, if you're working in a group environment perl can be very
confusing to work with. particularly if some teammembers are not
so experienced with perl and some are very experienced.

regards
--e--

Michelle Murrain wrote:

So what's your favorite web programming language to use with
postgres, and why? Are there speed/performance issues I should think
about? I'm also beginning to get into XML, so there is another set of
things to think about.

AOLserver tcl. Fast. Easy. Did I mention fast?

With ns_xml, nsjava, and nstomcat (and PHP4 as well, although you really
don't need PHP with the built-in TCL, unless you already have some PHP
code) available, as well as proven power and robustness (AOL is serving
an average of 28K hits per second on their AOLserver-based server farms
-- look at the architecture of Digital City for an example of what
AOLserver can do), AOLserver is an excellent, easy to learn and easier
to use platform to develop database backed websites on.

It's popular (see the netcraft survey and sum the results of NaviServer
and AOLserver -- not nearly as many as Apache or the other big ones, but
way more than Zope), and, did I mention, it's FAST! The database speed
is directly attributable to the multithreaded persistently pooled
connection paradigm that AOLserver pioneered in 1995.

See www.aolserver.com for details, docs, and source.

See www.openacs.org for a web community toolkit for AOLserver and
PostgreSQL that includes everything -- even the kitchen sink.

I've run AOLserver longer than I've run PostgreSQL -- in fact, it was
the 'Postgres95' support by AOLserver that got me involved (for better
or for worse) with PostgreSQL, back in 6.1.1 days.

--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11

-> > So what's your favorite web programming language to use with
-> > postgres, and why? Are there speed/performance issues I should think
-> > about? I'm also beginning to get into XML, so there is another set of
-> > things to think about.
->
-> AOLserver tcl. Fast. Easy. Did I mention fast?
->
-> With ns_xml, nsjava, and nstomcat (and PHP4 as well, although you really
-> don't need PHP with the built-in TCL, unless you already have some PHP
-> code) available, as well as proven power and robustness (AOL is serving
-> an average of 28K hits per second on their AOLserver-based server farms
-> -- look at the architecture of Digital City for an example of what
-> AOLserver can do), AOLserver is an excellent, easy to learn and easier
-> to use platform to develop database backed websites on.

There is also a module to build Python into AOLserver, as well.
http://pywx.idyll.org/.

We've been developing in AOLserver/PyWX for about three months now --
starting with programmers who didn't know Python, incidentally -- and
it works great. At some point we'll probably take advantage of the
Java modules, but apart from that, all of the functionality available thru
Tcl is available in Python as well.

The latest release provides a complete Python wrap of the AOLserver C API,
by the way.

To specifically address your XML needs: Python has an *excellent* collection
of XML utilities. E-mail me separately and we can talk about it (since it's
probably kind of off-topic for this list...)

cheers,
--titus

As far as perl goes, I know some web develoeprs for a consulting firm that
use Solaris and they are pretty tight in the industry. Their advice to me
was that if I already don't know Perl, don't learn it.

You expect anything different from a Sun representative?

One of our competitors sunk well over a million bucks into Sun/Oracle
hardware, and thought they'd be "cutting-edge" by doing all of their
back-end programming in Java. The end result is that our $20,000 cluster
using Linux, Postgres, and Perl out-performs their setup by a very
significant factor, and also has a greater potential for scalability. It's
also a lot easier for us to find programmers than they can, and we turn out
new products faster than they do.

steve

Titus Brown wrote:

-> With ns_xml, nsjava, and nstomcat (and PHP4 as well, although you really

There is also a module to build Python into AOLserver, as well.
http://pywx.idyll.org/.

Sorry, Titus, I knew about pywx, but forgot to mention it.

--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11

They didn't work for Sun, per se. They mostly do hosting and they do it on
Soalris. Granted, I am unaware of how tight they are with Sun, but as with
all advice, it has to be taken with a grain of salt.

Adam Lang
Systems Engineer
Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Wolfe" <steve@iboats.com>
To: <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 2:00 PM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] web programming

As far as perl goes, I know some web develoeprs for a consulting firm

that

use Solaris and they are pretty tight in the industry. Their advice to

me

was that if I already don't know Perl, don't learn it.

You expect anything different from a Sun representative?

One of our competitors sunk well over a million bucks into Sun/Oracle
hardware, and thought they'd be "cutting-edge" by doing all of their
back-end programming in Java. The end result is that our $20,000 cluster
using Linux, Postgres, and Perl out-performs their setup by a very
significant factor, and also has a greater potential for scalability.

It's

also a lot easier for us to find programmers than they can, and we turn

out

(and PHP4 as well, although you really don't
need PHP with the built-in TCL, unless you
already have some PHP code)

AOLServer comes with a built-in PHP4 interpreter these days? That's fabulous; I'll have to give it another look. As far as your statement above, in my opinion TCL itself is the strongest argument for "needing" PHP. :-)

Join 18 million Eudora users by signing up for a free Eudora Web-Mail account at http://www.eudoramail.com

K Parker wrote:

(and PHP4 as well, although you really don't
need PHP with the built-in TCL, unless you
already have some PHP code)

AOLServer comes with a built-in PHP4 interpreter these days?

No -- PHP4 supports AOLserver's API now, just like Apache. See the PHP4
pages for more info.

That's fabulous; I'll have to give it another look. As far as your statement above, in my opinion TCL itself is the strongest argument for "needing" PHP. :-)

Aw, tcl code is easy -- once you get past the command/string paradigm if
you're used to function/expression coding. It's just different.

And, if you do decide to give OpenACS a try, you'll find many seriously
useful procedures defined for you, even if you don't use the actual ACS
codebase. Stuff like the nice 'set_the_usual_form_variables' procedure.

And the AOLserver API is strong in db-functionality -- it beats PHP's db
API for one, and only one, reason -- AOLserver's tcl (and C) db API is
regular -- that is, there isn't one set of functions for PostgreSQL and
a whole different set for MySQL -- there is a single ns_db API that is
regular across all the databases. DB-specific extensions are handled
through things like ns_ora for Oracle, ns_pg for PostgreSQL, etc.

And I do PHP programming (for hire) as well as AOLserver TCL, so I have
a good basis for that remark. Although I wouldn't count myself a PHP
'guru', I do understand the language, and can make it do what I want.
Likewise with AOLserver TCL.

It's just another language. No better; no worse.

If I had to use Z80 machine code (in hexadecimal) to do web pages, I
would -- it's just another language. (but, then again, Z80 hex machine
code is my native tongue, so _anything_ is easier from my point of
view).

--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11