Information Technology Basic Information

What is PHP?

PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, with that PHP standing for Personal HomePage [Tools]. This type of acronym is known as a retronym.

PHP is currently the most popular web server extension language, used by many websites both large and small. Its popularity is partly due to its free, open-source nature and partly due to its friendliness and convenience. Tasks such as reading an entire file and outputting it to the web browser can be accomplished with a single line of PHP code. And PHP programmers can begin by sprinkling a small amount of code into a page otherwise made up entirely of HTML— a convenience also available in Microsoft's ASP.NET and other extension languages.

PHP is an open-source language, used primarily for dynamic web content and server-side applications. It is often pointed to as the main competitor with:

• Microsoft's C# - Visual Basic.NET - ASP family,
• Sun's Java - JSP
• Macromedia's ColdFusion
• CGI - Perl

What is Apache?

Often referred to as simply Apache, a public-domain open source Web server developed by a loosely-knit group of programmers. The first version of Apache, based on the NCSA httpd Web server, was developed in 1995.

Core development of the Apache Web server is performed by a group of about 20 volunteer programmers, called the Apache Group. However, because the source code is freely available, anyone can adapt the server for specific needs, and there is a large public library of Apache add-ons. In many respects, development of Apache is similar to development of the Linux operating system.

The original version of Apache was written for UNIX, but there are now versions that run under OS/2, Windows and other platforms.

What is MySql?

MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS) based on SQL (Structured Query Language). First released in January, 1998,

MySQL is an open source relational database management system (RDBMS)that uses Structured Query Language (SQL), the most popular language for adding, accessing, and processing data in a database. Because it is open source, anyone can download mySQL and tailor it to their needs in accordance with the general public license.

MySQL is currently available under two different licensing agreements: free of charge, under the GNU General Public License (GPL) open source system or through subscription to MySQL Network for business applications.

MySQL runs on virtually all platforms, including Linux, Unix, and Windows. It is fully multi-threaded using kernel threads, and provides application program interfaces (APIs) for many programming languages, including C, C++, Eiffel, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, and Tcl.

MySQL is used in a wide range of applications, including data warehousing, e-commerce, Web databases, logging applications and distributed applications. It is also increasingly embedded in third-party software and other technologies.