Need opinions on server/scriptin choice

[Vladdy]

Hi all,

While everyone certainly has their favorite when it comes to scripting language, I'm interested in the following.

Given same/comparable hardware and a database driven website application:
which OS/Server/scripting language/database combination provides:
- fastest response/script execution times
- fastest file seeking times (say every visitor has associated file on the server)
- fastest database search times
- easiest scalability - going from small to large traffic (associated database size) with minimum changes.

Opinions, please

[mat]

:confused: dunno, only someone who has tried all the different "OS/Server/scripting language/database" combinations could actually give you a valid opinion on that?

I vote for Coldfusion. :p

[whammy]

ROFL @ coldfusion.

From what I've seen, ASP.NET.

If you aren't up to snuff with that (and I'm not, yet), PHP is probably the fastest otherwise... but all others should be plenty fast... (except for coldfusion). ;)

[mordred]

These are a couple of good questions, but rather also quite general ones, so I suppose it will be hard to find hard facts in form of technical benchmarks that show you clearly the optimal combination to choose. Plus, most of us server-side scripters have one language they really do like, so this topic might either lead to a interesting debate or a rather pointless holy war.

Also, some of your questions are directly related to each other which adds to the complexity of a good answer. If the database crawls, so is your script response time rising. If traffic is very heavy, that affects also the load on your db server etc.

Does it always have to be the fastest at all? If ASP execution time for a comparable script would be 0.0003 nanosecs higher than that of JSPs, does it really matter? Which of your questions are the really critical ones (if you plan something for yahoo, you'd better put much value on scalability)?

I can only speak for PHP because I only have marginal knowledge in other server-side languages. All in all, I'm quite satisfied with PHP. Combined with MySQL, it works all fast enough for me. If a client complained about a sluggish script, it was always sufficient to optimize the design of the application or some specific algorithms than to switch the underlying systems.

File seeking times... dunno. Never compared that to the speed of other languages/OSs, since I don't use files for storing large quantities of data very often. Scalability would be the weakest point of PHP, but that's only my opinion, because I find the OOP abilities of PHP lacking, but things are gonna change next year with ZE2.

One definite plus in PHP and that I always hear from our Java/JSP developers is that you can develop apps in PHP very fast to get a first prototype done. On the other hand, maintenance of three-year-old scripts in PHP can be quite erh... challenging. :D

Hope that helps you in your decision taking, let us know you final choice then!

[Mhtml]

From what I heard .Net leaves ASP and PHP in a cloud of dust.

But from ASP and PHP, I find that ASP excecutes a lot faster but as for databases I am unsure because I don't know if you can connect to most or just MySql in PHP.

My vote is for ASP if you want what you asked for (apart from server stability (did you ask for that?) .. )

But if you think you will find it hard to pick up PHP later because it is a whole lot different to ASP then use it.

[whammy]

This article may be of interest to you...

http://www.mysql.com/eweek/index.html

[mat]

I am surprised at that graph :eek:

But from ASP and PHP, I find that ASP execcutes a lot faster but as for databases I am unsure because I don't know if you can connect to most or just MySql in PHP.


I would say only from my recent experience and that's all i go on of course, that ASP is quicker than php.

[redhead]

i think its a personal preferance... i find PHP reasonably easy and ASP like learning hebrew but others would say that its the other way around...

[firepages]

Originally posted by Mhtml
From what I heard .Net leaves ASP and PHP in a cloud of dust.

But from ASP and PHP, I find that ASP excecutes a lot faster but as for databases I am unsure because I don't know if you can connect to most or just MySql in PHP.


Ok I promise not to start... well ok ~ its pretty hard to talk about .NET performance since there is as yet no release .NET server to carry out tests on its native platform (I have RC1)

PHP has native MS SQLserver functions, its actually faster than vanilla ASP ever could be, + PHP has native connectivity to Oracle,Sybase,Informix,PostgresSQL,DBM,Interbase + Unified ODBC for the rest.

PHP as an ISAPI module on IIS has to be faster than vanilla ASP due to the way that vanilla ASP works.

.NET may well be promising in the speed stakes due to it's 'compilation' but as JAVA proves compliation does not always equal speed though I do expect .NET to fair better!

Agree totally with Mordred in that the odd micro-second here or there really is not the issue, scalability is, and has always been the big question mark over the head of PHP and its most easily attacked facet.

Whilst there is still no decent commercial PHP-centric enterprise application suite I think that the current PHP user-base goes a way to suggest that it is scalable, granted of course that its only going to get better with Zend2! , the recent announcement that Yahoo is moving all future projects to PHP and rewriting some of its existing codebase to PHP gives a hint ,if the worlds biggest website thinks it will scale to thier needs then perhaps it will ;)

fileseeking I think may see PERL a little faster than all of the above and mod_perl is getting awfully popular and there are big changes ahead for PERL which may bring it back into competition-land so lookout.

- MySQL is fine to the point , the point where transactions are required ,and those transactions are dealing with say mission-critical financial data ... I dont think you want MySQL running your bank (yet) , also for larger projects you really are going to like stored-procedures etc and whilst I can live by coding around the lack of eg foreign keys these are `essential` requirements of a true RDBMS.


SO my totally unbiased opinion :eek:
ColdFusion sucks :p
JSP/JAVA - too slow ,overly complex for 99% of applications it is used for
ASP was fun but limited
$lang.NET looks promising
PERL nearly died but lookout
PHP owns

[brothercake]

Consider also - are you prepared to reduce a little of your process efficiency in data-format-conversion, for the sake of long-term interoperability?

If you are - keep all the actual data in XML. Then it basically doesn't matter what technology you use to process it; or if you change to a completely different paradigm in the future :D

[bbrown]

I've used ColdFusion for years and years. Our company has just switched to ASP for all development. We made a bad move, in my mind.

I've acquired roughly similar proficiency in both languages and I can honestly say that development is simpler and quicker in ColdFusion. It scales well, has an active developer community, and incorporates all of the latest technologies (in its MX form) as well as some found only in CF (tight Flash integration). What's more, CFMX is now based on J2EE and can take advantage of compilation.

The only discussion I've seen about the first web application language is "ColdFusion sucks." That's very helpful to someone just starting out and looking for guidance.

As for your specific questions:

1) Response time differences between well-written code in any of the languages is going to be extremely negligible in all but the most stressful of situations. And those can be addressed by throwing more servers into the equation.

2) I think file seek times are dependent on the file system and hardware. Again, any differences between the languages are probably negligible.

3) Database search times depend on a host of variables: RDBMS, drivers, OS, hardware, etc. I would recommend using stored procedures for performance and security reasons, but I haven't noticed any differences between CF and ASP in accessing them.

4) Scalability: ColdFusion scales just fine and includes clustering software built-in. However, adding servers does increase costs because ColdFusion Professional is around $1,200. However, I think that that is money well-spent because of decreased development time.

My larger point is that every language has its fanatics and detractors. Moreover, the best language is one that you can achieve proficiency in because once you get to that level, the performance of the various languages are largely similar. View some sample code from a smattering of languages, read the feature lists of them, and see what catches your eye. Do some more investigating and see if you still like it. Good luck!