PHP vs ASP Debate

The PHP vs Asp debate! We use PHP here, but will may  switching to ASP soon, for security reasons predominantly, and as developers are actually of higher standard for what you pay for in our experience, in ASP.

But... PHP is better for many reasons...

Active Server Pages (ASP) is Microsoft's scripting technology for displaying dynamic web pages, ASP programmes mostly use VBScript, JScript. PHP on the other hand PHP is the open source alternative to ASP that runs on multiple operating systems, incuding Linux, Windows solaris and other OS.

Speed PHP is relatively much more faster and stable than ASP, ASP is built on a COM-based architecture so when ever a program tries to connect to a database or he calls a COM object there is an overhead on the server, All this COM overhead adds up and slows things down.
Under PHP, everything runs in PHP's memory space. This means that PHP code will run faster because there is no overhead of communicating with different COM objects in different processes. Again ASP is slower and more memory intensive applications than PHP's model because each ASP language compiler runs in its own process.

Price PHP installtions are definetly cheaper to install, PHP runs great on Linux which is free, on the other hand ASP runs on the IIS Server (Internet Information Server) which need's Windows N.T/2000/2003 Servers.

Apart from that ASP mostly uses MS-SQL Server as the back end which again is expensive, Where as PHP programmes mostly use MySQL which is again FREE!

     Editor: I have built sites both with ASP and PHP One of our sites (Funtoosh.com was built on ASP and had been converted to PHP) I had to pay 3 times more for hosting my ASP site than what I pay for my PHP sites and the PHP site is much faster more faster than the ASP!

No Hidden Cost With ASP if you need to upload files, then you would need a third party component like ASPuplod, similarly if you need to send mail you need another component and so on.

In PHP common tasks like ftp, encrypt passwords in MD5, or send email from a web page all are built in no hidden cost, and as PHP is Open source there is a lot of free code available for PHP.

Cross Platform compatablily As stated earlier PHP programms run on Unix, Linux, Solaris and Window's with ASP you are mostly stuck with Windows.

When building web sites, ASP and PHP are very popular languages. Here's my opinion on whether ASP or PHP is best.

Both ASP and PHP are languages used to build Dynamic Web sites that can interact with Databases and exchange information. ASP (Active Server Pages) is from Microsoft and is used with IIS (Internet Information Server) that runs on Microsoft Servers. PHP (Personal Home Pages) is from Rasmus Lerdorf, who originally designed this parsing language which was later modified by different people. It runs on Unix and Linux servers and it also has an NT server version.

There are a lot of differences between ASP and PHP.

Cost

To run ASP programs one needs IIS installed on a Windows platform server, which is not free. PHP programs run on Linux, which is free. Even the connectivity of the database is expensive in the case of ASP as MS-SQL is a product of Microsoft that needs to be purchased. PHP generally uses MySQL, which is freely available.

Speed

If we compare the speed of ASP and PHP then PHP has an upper hand. PHP code runs faster than ASP. ASP is built on COM based architecture, which is an overhead for the server whereas PHP code runs in its own memory space.

Platform Compatibility

PHP programs can run on various platforms like Linux, Unix, Windows and Solaris whereas ASP is mainly associated with Windows platforms. However, ASP can run on a Linux platform with ASP-Apache installed on the server.

Additional Costs

Many of the tools used in PHP are free of cost and since PHP is open source a lot of code can be found in open source forums. PHP has inbuilt features like ftp, email from a web page or even encryption mechanisms but in ASP such features are not built in and some additional components are required. Therefore an additional cost is incurred for such components.

Base Language

PHP is based on C++ language and the syntax used in PHP is quite similar to C/C++. C/C++ is still considered the best programming language by many programmers and people who love this language would surely feel more comfortable with the syntax of PHP. ASP on the other hand has a more Visual Basic kind of syntax that again is closely related to only Microsoft products. So, it depends on a person-to-person which language he or she is comfortable

Database Connectivity

PHP, being extremely flexible, can connect to various databases, the most popular being MySQL. ASP mainly uses MS-SQL.

Conclusion

Both languages have their advantages specific to users. Some would argue that both the languages have their own importance and depending on the user's requirements the language and the platform can be chosen. If we talk about developing a discussion board then ASP is equally capable but many feel the best discussion boards are developed in PHP. If a user is looking for some e-commerce application development then many would call ASP the ideal choice. This does not mean that PHP cannot provide e-commerce solutions, only that many people choose ASP.

From my perspective, PHP is an all around better choice than ASP.

Good Articles:
http://marty.anstey.ca/programming/php/articles/
http://www.blazonry.com/devnotes/phpasp1.php
PHP vs. ASP vs. JavaScript vs. CGI Benchmarks...  http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/benchmarks.html
http://www.netconcepts.com/php-versus-asp/
http://www.phpmac.com/articles.php?view=50
http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/ask_tim/2000/asp_php.html
Hosting Costs PHP vs ASP

In my opinion they both have their highs and lows, I'd pick PHP for projects of mine only because I've been using it longer than ASP, but then again my dad would choose ASP as he's be using it for donkeys years.

IMHO switching from PHP to ASP seems a tad silly if it's on the basis that ASP is more secure as it's only as secure as the developer writes it; or vice versa on the grounds that PHP is multiplatform (ASP servers can be run under linux).