CODEWITHSUNDEEP
php.net
dave
dave

Reputation: 61

PHP and MS.NET comparison

We are planning to develop a email marketing system. We are trying to decide if we shall use LAMP stack or MS.NET with SQL server.

I understand MS.NET is faster/easier to develop and has support from MS but in the long run it will cost more considering the licensing cost.

I guess LAMP will cost less and can also be scaled as good as MS.NET and SQL server architecture.

Can you pl provide your valuable feedback considering following criteria:

  1. Overall development and maintainance cost
  2. Scalability of software using PHP/MySQL and MS.NET/Sql Server
  3. Speed of development and availablity of development tools. ...anything criteria you deem important.

Also, what do you think about hybrid approach of MS.NET and MySQL. It will give RAD (rapid application support) of .NET and reduce database licensing cost.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 149

Answers (5)

Jeff Dege
Jeff Dege

Reputation: 11700

In my mind, the great advantage of ASP.NET over PHP is the ability to develop code that is shared across web and non-web apps. If you have complicated business logic, that needs to be implemented on your website and on desktop apps or background services, you can put in a .NET assembly and use it any any of them.

The closest platform I can think of that offers similar capabilities is server-side Java. Php simply can't do it.

Of course, you could implement the web UI in PHP, and implement the business logic in web services implemented in .NET or Java...

Upvotes: 1

webdad3
webdad3

Reputation: 9080

I work in both environments. Personally I lean towards PHP. I find that development time is a lot faster because the community (Open Source) is so much bigger. I never have to recreate the wheel. MS has a very cool IDE with a lot of drag and drop functionality but to be honest those controls have limitations and again I'm personally moving more towards a jQuery solution.

Obviously, maintenance and support is a huge issue. This would depend on the project. There are experts out there that you could hire to help if you needed. Some very big sites run on PHP and mySql.

As others have mentioned above, your team might be the final answer to your question. If you only have PHP programmers then I would use PHP. If you have .Net programmers then I would lean towards .Net... If you are hiring out of the box, PHP programmers are usually cheaper (unfortunately).

Just my 2 cents.

Upvotes: 2

John Wordsworth
John Wordsworth

Reputation: 2601

From my experience with web development...

  1. You're probably looking at a slightly higher development and maintainence cost with .Net. Generally, hosting is more expensive for .Net (although there is a free version of MS SQL) as the underlying software is more expensive. Naturally, it depends what you consider expensive / too expensive at this stage in your business - but you can't beat the cost of Linux.

  2. I believe that .Net has the potential for more efficient scalability but it's pretty much a subjective topic, as the scalability will depend on the way that the system is programmed, the quality of the code produced and many other factors. Realistically, this unlikely to be an issue until the system is very large.

  3. Development speed will depend on what your programmers are more comfortable with. .Net has a nice set of built-in controls and some really nice commercial packages to really speed things up (Telerik controls for instance, though they are not cheap!). There are also a number of very mature frameworks for PHP that can drastically reduce development time - I personally like CodeIgniter (free). I believe the determining factor on this point really does depend on your coders and their skills / experience with the languages.

The free version of MS SQL is free up to some very reasonable limits - the sort of limits that, if you hit them, you should be making enough money that upgrading isn't a problem!

At the end of the day, you should discuss what everyone feels most confortable developing with - if you want clean / good code, you're much less likely to get that if you're also learning a new language as you go. You should also decide what your limits are for the other factors to determine if there is enough of a difference that will realistically impact on your product - for instance you could try to compare performance between the two languages forever, but they're both almost certainly fine for your needs - so don't worry too much about it!

Upvotes: 2

eglasius
eglasius

Reputation: 36037

Its not a fair comparisson if you compared .net with ms sql vs. php with mysql.

Compare using mysql in both, if you are willing to use mysql with php, why not with .net?

That aside, pre-existing skills in the team will make a Huge difference. This applies for both the development aspect and the infrastructure aspect (managing/monitoring the servers).

Upvotes: 1

MaQleod
MaQleod

Reputation: 999

There is a free version of SQL server, but of course there is no support for it, so maintenance is entirely on your IT staff, just as it would be with LAMP. Both are equally scalable for most people's needs. PHP has some framework options which can make it just as easy to get an initial system up and running, just as you would with .NET, but no matter which language you choose, the speed of development is all going to be based on your development team.

Upvotes: 1

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