PHP on Windows

hjanssen — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:50:00 GMT

I have this really odd feeling of Dejavu. The last blog I wrote (here), I started by saying that I have been very delinquent with writing blogs. So what do I do? I continue to be very delinquent with my blogs!

If anything, I am consistent! :)

So, why this sudden re-emergence of myself on port25? (Besides the fact that I just realized that it has been months since I last blogged, that is) Well we have been keeping ourselves very busy in the last few months. A lot of that work relates directly to PHP, so I wanted to talk about some of these efforts.

We have significantly increased our work in this area. And my group continues to find itself at the middle of pretty much all of these efforts. The SQL Server driver for PHP is now in its second release (Get the latest bits here). And we continue to make improvements and enhancements going forward to this driver.

We have also been working very closely with the PHP community on improving PHP performance on Windows. This is an effort that will be ongoing and probably accelerating in the months to come.

With the release of Windows Server 2008, I wanted to take a moment and highlight some of the things that have been done to make Windows an excellent PHP Deployment platform.

First of all, Microsoft late last year released FastCGI for IIS6 and IIS7. IIS7 is integrated with Windows Server. IIS7 has as part of its deployment FastCGI included (not an optional download as is the case with IIS6) this in effect means that with IIS7, Microsoft has added out of the box Microsoft-supported software designed to run PHP on IIS.

Equally as interesting, we have been working with Zend to help them certify Zend Core for Windows Server 2008. I think this makes it one of the first PHP products to be certified for WS2008. Which makes Windows PHP ready :). Imagine that, PHP running on Windows Server, fully certified!

To this end we will continue to work with Zend very closely to continue to improve PHP on Windows.

Secondarily (although not directly related to Windows Server) we have also been working with Zend to provide Cardspace functionality in the Zend Framework. You can get it here, and read more about how to use it at the Zend website here. Which is another way in which Microsoft has added support to PHP for Microsoft technologies.

This continues the close relationship with Zend into the future, and I am expecting to work with them on a whole host of other PHP related efforts going forward.

As you could read in earlier blogs by Garrett Serrack we hosted the Apache Software Foundation guys here in Redmond last week. So look for a blog from me later this week on the wrap-up of that visit.

Hank Janssen & John Bocharov: Introduction to SQL Server Driver for PHP (SQLPHP)

jcannon — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 18:14:00 GMT

Our own Hank Janssen gives the Channel9 team an update on the work that has been done to provide a native driver to SQL Server for PHP.

"SQL Team Says:
"The SQL Server Driver for PHP (October 2007) Community Technology Preview (CTP) is designed to enable reliable, scalable integration with SQL Server for PHP applications deployed on the Windows platform. The Driver for PHP is a PHP 5 extension that allows the reading and writing of SQL Server data from within PHP scripts. It provides a procedural interface for accessing data in all Editions of SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000 (including Express Edition), and makes use of PHP features, including PHP streams to read and write large objects."

Wow. This is cool. Need to find out more about this. What exactly is this thing? Why did we create it? What are the platform requirments? Is it open source? Who are the folks behind this? You know the C9 drill. Tune in and meet SQLPHP Program Manager John Bocharov and Microsoft Open Source champion Hank Janssen who answer a bunch of questions and provide good context about the thinking behind SQLPHP, history and future. Check it out.

Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft : Hank Janssen, Dev Center

PHP on Windows

Hank Janssen & John Bocharov: Introduction to SQL Server Driver for PHP (SQLPHP)