Microsoft moves to embrace PHP

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 01 November 2006 15:43

Your IT - Home IT

PHP, the most widely used web development scripting language, has always run faster on Linux servers than on Windows servers. Microsoft aims to change that by forming a partnership with Zend Technologies whose founders played key roles in the development of the open source PHP language.

A major problem for Microsoft has been the fact that PHP, which has been used to develop millions of web sites running complex applications, works much faster with Linux and the the most popular web server, the open source Apache server, than with Windows and the Windows Information Server. This has hindered the adoption of Windows for many web developments using PHP.

Microsoft's platform strategy team, led by the software company's resident Linux specialist Bill Hilf, intend to level the PHP playing field with the help of Zend. This will be achieved by Microsoft providing PHP with direct access to its Windows APIs, resulting in the development of an open source version of PHP for Windows.

According to Zend, once PHP is optimized for Windows, which will be accomplished by January 2007, it will run at speeds comparable to what it already achieves on Linux platforms.