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worstcritic



Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 18
PostPosted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 6:01 am    Post subject: Desktop development servers... Reply with quote
Well I recently started a thread in the beginner's section about client-side vs server-side scripting. I've decided for the calculator and charting components that I'll be using in my site that server-side scripting is for me. I'd hate for my site to become useless because someone has their browser security settings cranked up.

I'm still in the early develop stages of my site, and I'd like to run a simple server on my desktop that I can publish my pages to and test PHP scripts. I'm operating Windows 2000 Pro on a PIII 800. (its been a great machine but it is time for a new one!) I just downloaded something called Bizzar Server. I've never heard of it until now, but I'm hoping it will make for a simple development environment.

If anyone has any feedback on Bizzar Server, or would like to suggest a simple windows based server that I could use for development, I'd really appreciate it!

Thanks...

P.S. Will I also need a windows based version of MySQL? Any suggestions?
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Will



Joined: 26 Feb 2006
Posts: 148
Location: UK
PostPosted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 3:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
What's the software spec of your production server? I'd suggest trying to get as close a match to that environment on your development machine so that you don't fall foul of different versions of PHP or MySQL etc.

XAMPP is an easy to install all-in-one package including Apache, PHP and MySQL. There are plenty of others if XAMPP doesn't take your fancy.
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worstcritic



Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 18
PostPosted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 7:46 pm    Post subject: Thank you... Reply with quote
Will, thank you for your response. I don't have a production server yet. So far what I have are some look-and-feel pages with little or no content. I haven't elected a hosting service yet. Much of my content will be shaped around the functionality I'm able to provide via certain PHP components. This is my first experience working with PHP and MySQL. Is there a resource you can point me to for identifying the "gotchas" of disparate PHP and MySQL versions?

Thanks again.
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Will



Joined: 26 Feb 2006
Posts: 148
Location: UK
PostPosted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 9:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Most Linux/Apache/PHP/MySQL hosts will be running the latest stable, but not bleeding edge, releases e.g. most will still be running PHP 4 even though PHP 5 has been available for ages.

Unless you're trying to make use of functionality that's only available in the latest releases then I doubt you'd come across any issues especially if you're still within the stable major revision i.e. PHP 4.x as opposed to PHP 5.x.

The good thing about XAMPP is that you can easily flip between PHP 4 and 5, but I'm not sure if you can flip between Apache 1.x / Apache 2.x and MySQL 4 / MySQL 5.

Basically, I don't think it's something that you'd have to be worried about at this point.
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MarkHarrison



Joined: 14 Dec 2005
Posts: 15
PostPosted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 7:44 pm    Post subject: Re: Desktop development servers... Reply with quote
worstcritic wrote:
If anyone has any feedback on Bizzar Server, or would like to suggest a simple windows based server that I could use for development, I'd really appreciate it!

P.S. Will I also need a windows based version of MySQL? Any suggestions?


I'd not get too worried about which software versions you install, other than to stay with PHP4 rather than PHP5. The concept of abstraction (the database programmer doesn't particularly need to know what version of a web server (s)he's writing for or what version of a database (s)he's getting data out of) works relatively well in LAMP/WAMPspace. (LAMP = Linux Apache MySQL PHP, WAMP = Windows... well, you can guess...)


I have a relatively simple install, which while not what you'd want to replicate, hopefully proves the point it doesn't matter too much.

On the dev box:

- Windows 2000
- Apache 2.0.54
- MySQL 4.0.18
- PHP 4.3.9

On my ISP's server:

- Linux 2.4.21-27.ELsmp
- Apache 1.3.34
- MySQL 4.0.25
- PHP 4.4.1

Next to nothing in common except the "major versions" of MySQL and PHP.

Apache 1 -> 2 is a big move, but only for server admins, not particularly for web designers.

MySQL 4 -> 5 is a major change, but again, only really from the point of view of database managers. It includes funky things like cluster replication that matter if you are supporting large databases that are too big to fit performantly on a single server, but not relevant if you're writing websites - the whole point of such replication is that it's entirely hidden from the programmer.

PHP 4 -> 5 is a major, crazy, move from hell that you really don't want to go through. Fortunately, everyone seemed to agree, and over a year on, the world is still with PHP 4. Seriously, though, the changes were mainly architectural, it added a rather different encapsulation model and made it more of the sort of the language that Computer Scientists like and less of the sort of language that Coders like.

If I were you, I'd just get the latest stable Apache, PHP4 and MySQL4 direct, and they'll pretty much work together. Whether you go with Apache 1 or Apache 2 is pretty much immaterial.


The only reason for NOT going with Apache is if you need servlets. Trust me, if you need them, then you'll KNOW you need them. I really suspect that you don't Smile

Regards,

Mark
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