Local Development Question

PHP_Rookie2

I come to you, PHP Gurus, with my Newbie problem,

The situation:
We have a database in Lotus Notes R5. It stinks. I want to move it to a php platform, for increased accessability for some of our clients and better usability for our staff. Decision makers within the company have made the choice to use an Access backend for the database.

The problem:
What is my best bet for installing php and apache for LOCAL development? Our IT department is more like an IT "GUY", thus getting things set up by him is a bit hairy, since he's fairly busy. I have a programming background (well the degree anyway) but I know nothing about setting up all these fancy smancy web servers and such. I want to develop everything locally, then deal with getting it linked with an external database. I am actually embarrased at how little I know about Apache and web serving in general, so forgive the following statement. I want to be sure that there are no security issues created when I install this stuff locally on my machine to do the development.

Is XAMPP as easy as it appears? Install, then begin coding and testing?

Thanks in advance,
Matt

FatStratCat

Well, are you planning on using mysql, PostGRE, or another Database?

Also, you'll need a linux type OS distro that caters to what you're trying to do.

FYI Apache is the server. Linux the Op sys. Mysql the database, php the server side script.

'm being very general here but in short you have a learning curve to tackle if you've never

done anything like it before.

The system as a whole is far more secure than windows is, but again you have quite a bit to learn to get it running.

Houdini

Yes XAMPP is an easy install for any OS unless you have a Mac then get MAMP. I have been using XAMPP for over three years. Just download and when installing the thing just accept the defaults and within 10 minutes you have a working Apache MySQL PHP and Perl plus phpMyAdmin and Mercury mail mail server and FileZilla FTP server.

PHP_Rookie2

Hi,

The database will be in Access.

For development purposes, everything will be done on my Windows machine. In the end, I do suspect it will reside on a nix box, but I have no idea what the company will use to host it. Will this cause major problems (dev on Windows and moving it to nix later on)? Keeping in mind, of course, that this is a very simple database and the queries will be quite simple as well.

Thanks again.

Cheers
Matt

ahundiak

The only hard part about moving it to a unix box might be connecting to the access database. But there are solutions. Rest of the app should be fine.

I use XAMPP for development on a Windows box. It really is easy to get running.

Houdini

You might find this article interesting about ODBC vs MySQL databases ODBC PHP can work just as well with this system as with MySQL. ODBC support is built in with PHP and for Windows no special extensions are required.