15039PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting languagehttp://idm.internet.com/articles/200006/php_06_20_00a.htmlPHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language. Like Microsoft's ASP technology, it is designed to be processed on the server side and produce dynamic Web pages.
PHP3 is the third version of the interpreter initially developed by Rasmus Lerdorf. It was originally destined to bring dynamic scripting functionality to personal HTML Web pages, which explains why it was christened Personal Home Page. For the second version of PHP, its engine was rewritten so that HTML form management functionality could be added, and its name became PHP/Form Interpreter (PHP/FI) to reflect this change. The arrival of PHP3 coincided with the rise of the Internet wave, a time when many personal and professional users were in need of dynamic behavior on their Web sites: online catalogs and e-commerce applications with shopping cart management. PHP now officially stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.PHP > Magazine ArticlesOct 12, 2006
There are a number of different interpretations. We are talking about tracking and control of software development and its activities. That is, the mangement of software development projects with respect to issues such as multiple developers working on the same code at the same time, targetting multiple platforms, supporting multiple versions, and controlling the status of code (for example beta test versus real release). Even within that scope there are different schools of thought:
The main difference between a cookie and a session is that a cookie is stored on your computer, and a session is not. Although cookies have been around for many years and most people do have them enabled, there are some who do not. Cookies can also be removed by the user at any time, so don't use them to store anything too important.
PHP (which originally stood for Personal Home Page) was first written by Rasmus Lerdorf as a simple set of Perl scripts to track users of his Web pages. He soon had enquiries from other people and rewrote it as a scripting engine. He also added support for forms, thus forming PHP/FI. As its popularity grew, a core group of developers created an API for it and turned it into PHP3. By now PHP was being used in situations which were never envisaged, and so a complete rewrite of the script parser was undertaken (the Zend engine), creating PHP4, which was much faster than PHP3. PHP now stood for PHP Hypertext Processor, and was ready for the big time...
While the success of Open Source software like Linux or Apache has been documented extensively throughout all mainstream media, the rise of PHP has gone largely unnoticed. Still, the Web scripting language PHP is the most popular module for the Apache Web server, according to a E-Soft survey (http://www.e-softinc.com/survey/). Netcraft studies have found that PHP is in use on over 6% of all Web domains in the world (see http://www.netcraft.com/survey). That is an incredible market penetration for a rather specialized product. This popularity continues to rise exponentially, with the new version 4.0 just around the corner. Increasingly, this is being reflected in traditional media: By May 2000, more than 20 books about PHP have been published in different languages, with more in the pipeline. Commercial players are beginning to join the bandwagon: PHP is included with Web servers, for example C2's Stronghold, and Linux distributions. A new company, Zend Technologies, has been formed to provide commercial add-ons and support for PHP. A long list of large-scale Web sites employ PHP, as well as hundreds of thousands small to medium Web sites. Enough reasons to take a closer look at PHP.
This lab series is not a tutorial on writing PHP programs or scripting dynamic Web pages. Rather its intent is to demonstrate how you can use PHP to separate the different elements that make up well designed and valid Web pages into their component parts and have these parts adapt in certain powerful ways. These components correlate almost exactly with the modular design of XHTML itself. Any number of other open-source languages such as Perl or Python could be used to achieve the same goal. Or commercial ones certainly, but let?s not go there.
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