[Sri is the founder of Yulop and in this post, he shares tech tips for startups and delves into the basic parameters, startups should look at before deciding on the technology]

Well, when i started to use CGI scripting, it was PERL and ASP that ruled the tech world. On the contrary, PHP an open source revolution was just starting; and now after the release of 5th version, every web developer should understand what’s in PHP and why it can potentially replace ASP.net or the upcoming RoR.

I have worked on ASP.net but my rationale behind choosing PHP was only the fact that it’s open source and the cost of hosting and cost of developing is very minimal!
History of PHP can be found in here
Performance Factor!
If your product uses ASP.net and SQL server as a DB, it has to be hosted on a IIS web server. If a space is shared with IIS server, you will always repent for all the SQL or unhelpful “service unavailable” messages you get which are traits of MS version of IIS. The technology doesn’t suit large scale hosting and is quite clearly unacceptable, if you hope to get major traffic to your site.
[ex: Orkut is coded using ASP.net and is hosted on IIS, you must be very familiar with unhelpful pages i am refering to]

When compared to PHP hosted on Apache with a respectful MYSQL, you could substantially be more reliable and need not worry about any breakpoints.

Hosting Ghost!
When you have to host a windows based system to support IIS and ASP.net programming, its way too expensive and literally not affordable for small scale business need.

On the other hand, switching to Linux based systems with PHP, you are a clear winner. It costs nearly 60% more to host on Windows compare to Linux systems.

I understand Linux experts are few and its easy to maintain a windows box with many MS certified engineers flocking around. It’s always challenging to have your linux box
always up and running, but when you look for a cost/benefit analysis, its always LINUX and PHP which are best to combat all my woes.

IIS : No SEO !
When you have a portal hosted on IIS, you would witness the most ugliest URLs and very unfriendly environment for a SEO.Probably MS didn’t had a forethoughts of a growing need for search engine optimization.

IIS isn’t SEO friendly and APACHE with its mod_rewrite command could let you easily play with .htaccess to bring effective ways of controlling search engine features.

Coding Column
ASP.net is robust AND secure with all its consistent framework and the connectivity to DB too is brilliantly implemented, and at the same time PHP is very inconsistent and doesn’t follow any best pratice (from a programming sense).

At the same time PHP is a programmer’s delight – type a PHP program on a simple text editor and run under your apache, you would see the interpreter replying back to you [very light weight], its all so easy when compare to installing, licensing, publishing , waiting for IIS to reply back along with those heavy frameworks to control the objects from a browser [what the heck]!!

PHP is so very simple to control and very easy for a novice programmer to start coding, it follows very good CGI scripting binaries of C programming language and with its Out-of-box coding standards it would very support huge traffic and further enhanced with every version.

Databases and woes!
Myself being an avid lover of MSSQL and with all its feature built resources such as Enterprise manager, Query Analyzer, I wouldn’t anytime compare with less privileged MYSQL.

MYSQL might look very easy for a starter, but it simply rejects complex queries only due to its arbitrary limits and moreover, the unsupported UI makes it more complex for SQL to be scripted.
Never mind all new SQL editors like SQLyog gives a supporting edge and with MYSQL on a enterprise user level, its getting better every day!

Conclusion:
The above expressed views are based only with my experience in working with ASP.net and PHP mode, I would anytime suggest for a migration to LINUX,APACHE,MYSQL,PHP [LAMP].

Tags: Technology for Startups