Question about PHP/ASP

nathandm1030

Im VERY new to this whole process but I've been given the task at my work to reorganize our web page. I want to go over to PHP and learn this, but we have some databases that were built from .asp. We plan to have both IIS and PHP running. My question is, if we switch our page over to PHP can we still be able to view the .asp database sites from the PHP. IIS would still be running but will it automatically switch to IIS if PHP is the service set to run the site. Does this question make sense, Im very confused right now.

Roger_Ramjet

You seem to be under the mis-aprehension that PHP is an alternative web server to IIS - IT IS NOT. IIS is a web SERVER and php is a programming language. You can use IIS, or Apache, or most any web server with php once you install the correct libraries. What you cannot do is to use Apache to serve up asp pages (as far as I know).

Step 1 for you then is to download and install php on your NT box and then to configure IIS to handle the php scripts correctly.

nathandm1030

Thanks Roger, just also wondering what if you have a website being served by Apache but you have IIS and Apache running in the background. Is there anyway to run the .asp pages, like is there a way for the IIS server to be called on an Apache run site to view the .asp files?

Schmeg007

nathandm1030 wrote:
I want to go over to PHP and learn this, but we have some databases that were built from .asp.

Which database does your current ASP pages utilize? Maybe you're running MSSQL Server or the open source MySQL?

Roger_Ramjet

nathandm1030 wrote:
Thanks Roger, just also wondering what if you have a website being served by Apache but you have IIS and Apache running in the background. Is there anyway to run the .asp pages, like is there a way for the IIS server to be called on an Apache run site to view the .asp files?

Well, since you could call the asp pages from IIS if it were on a different box, your problems arise because you are trying to run 2 web-servers on the same box. Not something I've tried myself.

thorpe

as roger stated, php can be run on IIS. also, in your post you said...

but we have some databases that were built from .asp

databases aren't built from asp, they are accessed from asp. asp is a programming language just like php. (well, not just like it but we wont go into that here) any database you can access from asp you can also access from php.

as for running IIS and apache on the same box. i wouldn't recommend it. you would need to run one of the servers on a different port. http's default port is 80, and that is where most browsers try to find your servers.

justsomeone

Roger Ramjet wrote:
Well, since you could call the asp pages from IIS if it were on a different box, your problems arise because you are trying to run 2 web-servers on the same box. Not something I've tried myself.

It's certainly possible to do this, but you may not need to.

If you need to run IIS in order to continue serving the asp pages, you can also configure IIS to support PHP. Then your IIS server will happily serve both .pas and .php pages.

If yu have some reason why you would prefer the complication and waste of running both webservers, then you can certainly install both on the same server. However you will have to get your hands dirty with some tricky configuration.

You could have each server listening to a different port, so that requests to www.yoursite.com go to IIS while [url]www.yoursite.com:8080[/url] go to apache. This might cause problems with network devices between your webserver and your visitors as you will be using relatively non-standard ports, and some devices may prevent access.

You might also be able to do something with Network Address Translation, but that could be even more tricky.

Doug_G

You won't have any problems with IIS, asp, and php on the same computer. Both asp and php pages will work fine.