Php Is One Of The Projects Of The Apache Software Foundation

There have been many Web application servers and script languages: CGI (Perl, C, etc.), ASP, PHP, ColdFusion, WebSphere, WebLogic, JRun, JSP, etc. Among them, PHP has been rapidly spreading since 1994 and has established its popularity. Although Perl/CGI (CGI: Common Gateway Interface) programming is still popular and ColdFusion emerged with a powerful combination with DreamWeaver and Flash, PHP is still very popular among web
application developers.

PHP is one of the projects of the Apache Software Foundation. PHP (recursive acronym for "Hypertext Preprocessor") is free and offered under an open source license. It is a widely used general-purpose scripting language and nterpreter that is especially used to create dynamic Web pages. It is commonly used to extract data out of a database and present it on the Web pages. It can be embedded into HTML.

An HTML page that includes a PHP script is typically given a file name suffix of ".php" ".php3," or ".phtml". In an HTML document, PHP script (similar syntax to that of Perl or C) is enclosed within special PHP tags. Therefore, the author can jump in and out of PHP mode in an HTML file (similar to ASP and Cold Fusion) instead of having to rely on heavy amounts of code to output HTML. PHP-enabled web pages are treated just like regular HTML pages and you can
create and edit them the same way you normally create regular HTML pages.1 PHP does not require compilation. You can think of it as a normal HTML file which happens to have a set of special tags available to you that do a lot of interesting things. PHP can perform any task that any CGI program can do, but its strength lies in its compatibility with many types of databases. Also, PHP can talk across networks using IMAP, SNMP, NNTP, POP3, or HTTP.

By the word “PHP”, three things are referred to. One is PHP scripting language, which can be embedded in HTML code. The second one is PHP interpreter module within a Web server. The third one is PHP as a whole environment (including both PHP scripting language and PHP interpreter) which helps implement dynamic features on the Web.

One of the strongest and most significant features of PHP is its native database support for a wide range of databases (MySQL, mSQL, Oracle, Sybase, Informix, Direct MS-SQL, PostgreSQL, Unix dbm, IBM DB2, dBase, InterBase, FrontBase, Ingres, Hyperwave, Adabas D, Solid, FilePro, Empress, Ovrimos, Velocis), which allows access to the databases directly through SQL statements.