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Enterprise IT departments face significant challenges in building applications that tie together heterogeneous business functions and data from a range of existing systems and applications. Existing portal applications are too rigid and inflexible to adapt to changing business requirements. Existing Java and J2EE application development tools are complex and sophisticated, requiring the commitment of expensive resources and long development cycles.

PHP 5, the open source Web scripting environment, provides the ideal environment for rapidly building these applications. PHP:

• Provides the ideal balance of simplicity, power, flexibility, and accessibility
• Incorporates native support for XML and Web services standards like SOAP, supporting enterprise application integration and service-oriented architectures (SOA)
• Directly interfaces with code written in C/C++, Java, COM/.NET, and Perl; and with data stored in a wide range of SQL databases

Through this support, PHP enables developers to quickly assemble Web applications that address pressing business needs without regard for where application functionality or data currently resides. PHP seamlessly abstracts the developer from the connectivity with these various systems, providing a simple PHP-based view that can be leveraged in building enterprise applications. In this way, PHP can be the glue that ties together functionality from diverse systems to address pressing business needs.

In this article, you'll also learn how PHP-based applications are built more quickly, are easier to maintain and adapt to changing business requirements, are deployable on any platform and Web server, and provide a robust and scalable execution platform proven through widespread Internet deployment and use.

PHP 5: What Is It?
PHP 5 is the latest version of PHP, the open source scripting language designed for building Web applications. PHP 5 adds a number of improvements and enhancements to PHP including improved support for object-oriented programming, XML, and Web services.

PHP, along with the Apache Web Server and Linux operating system, is among the most widely deployed and used pieces of open source software. PHP, according to NetCraft, has surpassed Microsoft ASP, making it the most popular Web scripting language and it's being utilized on over 15 million Web sites today.

PHP has proven itself across a range of large enterprise deployments at companies worldwide including Hewlett-Packard, Boeing, Lufthansa, Dresdner Bank, Disney Online, Yahoo!, Lycos, Sprint, T-Mobile, Orange, Nortel Networks, Lucent, WallStreetOnline, and Siemens.

How Is PHP Used?
PHP scripts are embedded within Web pages along with HTML, similar to other Web scripting languages such as Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) or Sun Microsystems' Java Server Pages (JSP). Like ASP and JSP, PHP is a server-side language, meaning it runs on the Web server when a page is requested via HTTP, rather than on the Web browser or other client.

While there are many available tools for building Web sites, most were originally designed for some other purpose. Java, for instance, started out as a language geared toward client-side applets, not server-side servlets. The Perl programming language started life as a system administration tool and was later shoehorned into its role as a Web development language, resulting in structural problems such as memory leaks.

PHP is easy to use for Web development because it has been designed from the outset for the Web environment. That means that PHP has many built-in functions that make Web programming simpler, so that programmers can focus on the logic of programming without wasting precious development time.

Benefits of Using PHP
PHP provides a number of unique benefits to enterprise developers:

• Rapid, iterative development cycles with a low learning curve - PHP is easy to learn and use compared with other Web development languages. The language syntax is very readable and understandable, simplifying team development and maintenance. The code, embedded within HTML pages, can be quickly deployed and tested, supporting an iterative development process incorporating frequent user feedback. All of this leads to improved developer productivity and better resulting applications.
• Robust, high-performance and scalable platform; stable and secure - PHP is designed for building Web applications that are scalable up to a very large number of users. Zend Technologies offers additional performance-enhancing tools for PHP, including sophisticated caching, content compression, and acceleration, enabling even further scalability. PHP is stable and secure, robust enough for business-critical applications requiring constant uptime and airtight security.
• Easily integrated into heterogeneous enterprise environments and systems - PHP is fully interoperable with other languages, protocols, systems, and databases, including C/C++, Java, Perl, COM/.NET, XML/Web services, LDAP, ODBC, Oracle, and MySQL. As an open source product, PHP is deployable anywhere: on any platform, with any Web server, with any database. PHP is not tied to any proprietary platforms or technologies.
• Proven through widespread deployment and supported by a vibrant community - PHP is the most widely deployed and used Web development language on the Internet, surpassing ASP, JSP, and Perl. The language has a vibrant community of users continuing to support and improve the language. The easy extensibility of PHP makes it very flexible in supporting new capabilities and enabling developers to take advantage of extensions done by others. There is a wide range of support Web sites, code samples, training classes, books, conferences, and available programmers with PHP expertise. Zend Technologies even offers a formal PHP certification program.

PHP 5 Support for XML and Web Services
PHP 5 introduces new integrated support for both XML and Web services standards. These standards are gaining momentum in the enterprise as a universal language for communication between platforms and systems and for integration of application functionality. PHP 5 eases development with these standards by incorporating native support, shielding the developer from much of the complexity involved when working with XML and Web services in other Web development languages.

Native XML Support
XML is becoming more and more common as a data interchange format between applications and even between companies. XML is a standard for representing structured data along with customized tags, enabling the definition, transmission, validation, and interpretation of that data. Most applications being created today need to be able to create or consume XML data.

PHP 5 includes a powerful new capability called SimpleXML. SimpleXML allows developers to manipulate XML files as if they were PHP objects, meaning that any PHP developer can easily use XML without having to be proficient in XML parsing standards like Simple API for XML (SAX) or Document Object Model (DOM).

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