Question re: Java vs PHP

conor

I'm not really sure if this is the place to be asking this, but I was wondering what peoples opinions are regarding te use of Java Servlets/JSP and PHP.

I am about to begin my final year project which is to develop an online community/virtual community. And I am trying to decide on what technology to use. I have been using PHP for about a while now, and I am very comfortable using it, in fact, I already have a lot of the things I will need for the project already done in PHP. But, I understand Jave to be somewhat more robust, and better in some areas, e.g. I may need to implement some sort of video conferencing app on the site, which would be somewhat easier using java.

At the moment I see 3 options in front of me.
1) Use PHP exclusively
2) Use Java exclusively
3) Use a 3 tier approach, with a Java servlet backend, and PHP middleware.

The one thing with Java is that I am not as proficient with it as I am with PHP, although I am sure I can pick it up easy enough. But I am having trouble finding the same sort of support on the internet, that I have found for PHP.

Anyway, if anyone has any thoughts, or links for me, it would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Conor.

[deleted]

There are tons of pro's and con's about java and PHP, but the main things are:

Java is a lot harder to learn than PHP, which means that Java becomes more difficult to maintain. (read: any fool can debug an PHP script)
Java also requires a large runtime environment that eats resources and doesn't help performance.

PHP does not have the extensive OO structure that Java has, but then again, do you really need that for web apps?

"I may need to implement some sort of video conferencing app on the site, which would be somewhat easier using java."

Uhm.. you are not seriously thinking about writing that yourself, let alone writing that in java are you??

conor

"Uhm.. you are not seriously thinking about writing that yourself, let alone writing that in java are you??"

I'm not entirely sure yet, I havent given it much thought, but from what I understand there is the JMF(Java Media Framework) which I can use to implement it. I thikn it would only be a very basic video app, which does not seem too hard........i hope.....

As for the OO structure, that is one of the reasons that I am slightly leaning towards Java, since it is going to be a fairly large project, I think a OO appraoach will pay off in the long run.

Learning Java is probably my only problem, although I did do it for 3 years in college, but I'm only after getting a hang of it now(i spent the first 2 years of college getting drunk etc...) So i sort of feel that I would be able to get my head round Java quick enough.

"Java also requires a large runtime environment that eats resources and doesn't help performance."

are you sure, I always thought that because of the JVM it increases performance because code does not have to be constantly re-compiled?

Also, what is Java like with XML and databases? Is it any better than PHP?

[deleted]

"I thikn it would only be a very basic video app, which does not seem too hard"

I'd forget about it if I were you.
Not only would you need a client-side java, you also have to arrange for a server that can broadcast the video.

"As for the OO structure"

Hold on, PHP also has OO, just not as strict as Java (which is often a reason why people switch to PHP)

"I always thought that because of the JVM it increases performance because code does not have to be constantly re-compiled"

Re-compiling is not the problem, the JVM runs generic code, and translates the given instructions into something that the host can understand. It is just like an interpreter only a more complex. This is why Java on a JVM does not help your performance at all.
PHP does need to be compiled every time it is run, but you hardly notice that because PHP is so small.

"Also, what is Java like with XML and databases? Is it any better than PHP?"

I have no clue about what kind of native support Java has for XML and databases, but I remember that just uinder two years ago my java-loving collegue had to build all his database support himself. and as for XML... brrr... XML... ieuw!

Anon

Why don't you use a mix of both (not a 3 tier)? Since you already have part of the site done in PHP, use that. And since you are better with PHP, I think you should build most of the site using PHP.

Then for the video conferencing part, do it in Java, somehow 😛

For databases, I like PHP. It natively (or thru extensions) supports a wide variety of databases.

I'm not sure about XML though...My guess is Java, coz there have been entire books written on Java and XML!

Diego

Anon

I have no idea how could anybody implement video conferencing in PHP. You are talking major bandwidth and major app support.

If you are going to support video through the web, there has to be a local app installed on the clients computer, because you have to have some kind of drivers provided for the hardware. The video stream has to be directed to the server where it will be broadcasted to other people. One thing for sure - PHP won't do that... (Device drivers in php man... that's way off...) PHP is not made for that!!! Can Java provide that - I think so. You can write threaded apps with Java. However, I don't think that running Java as APPLET will let you talk to clients hardware. You'll have to have it as third party app...

Bottom line... I think that this phorum won't help you much, unless there is a Java superfreak who knows how to make applet talk to video camera hardware while running inside the browser... Microsoft has their NetMeeting thing, and it allows two people to talk with each other and it supports video streaming, but it runs as a third party app, through microsoft's servers.

smarlowe

For video conferencing, I'd strongly suggest a commercial system that is guaranteed to work. I.e. one with a support contract.

If you wanna write a nice web front end to it, that would be fine, but I agree with Vincent that writing an entire video conferencing app in either Java or PHP is probably heading down a long road.

Better to try and use some pre-built tools for the heavy lifting. Real server is pretty nice, and I think there's a couple of open source collaboration stuff out there.

If you don't HAVE to use stored procedures, then you can make your application database neutral by using ODBC to connect to it.

As for Java versus PHP, I tend towards using PHP as the front end display logic language, and a database with constraints, triggers, stored procedures, and other tricks for stuff that has to have business rules. I.e. it's better to put your logic in the database, as non-transportable as that may be, since it provides the best performance metrics on reasonable hardware, compared to putting business logic into applets that run in a distributed web app environment like Java is used for.

I agree with vincent that Java tends to produce code with a large footprint that doesn't scale all that well.

The interesting thing about footprint is that I have seen things with large footprints scale moderately well. Cold Fusion under Linux springs to mind. It doesn't scale to hundreds of simo connections, but it can handle dozens quite well, but it's got a huge foot print. Luckily, it's fast enough that it can swap around all the work it has between 5 or 10 big fat threads and still run well.

Apache 1.3 is a multi-process design, whereby a single process is required for each connection. This demands lighter weight processes, which apache / php do quite well.

Java seems to use a lot of memory and provide near PHP speed nowadays. It's not bad, it's pretty fast, but I can't find a JVM that doesn't knock over dead at least once a month or so for no apparent reason. It's still running, but no longer serving pages. Not sure why, but Sun's and IBM's JVM both do it in my slight out of date tomcat (circa 6 months ago.)

Adding modules to PHP can be painful for the uninitiated or junior sysadmin, but once you've built it a few times, it's no big deal to add a module, even to a running box.

PHP's modules, however, integrate seemlessly with the environment. No include files, no compiler directives, no anything, just call the functions for whatever modules are there.

While Java has a large selection of modular code ready to be added, it too is a pain in the but to add to and configure, just in a different way.

But I would say the real choice is between Perl and PHP. Perl has the much MUCH larger code base available, is VERY fast with MOD_PERL or equivalent and is a solid reliable language.

The more important factor is that both PHP and Perl are Open Source languages. You don't like what's happening? Change it yourself. Java (the compiler/interpreter) is not Open Source or Free. I don't trust Sun anymore than Microsoft, and they seem to be holding Java a little too close to their chests for my comfort. I'd be happier if Java was implemented in a more open manner than it is right now. Given the Artistic license of Perl and the GPL/Zend licensing of PHP I know I can always fix problems if I really have to.

Anon

Just a quick little note. I know very little about PHP but some about java. You can definitely do what you are talking about in java. JMF will allow you to do so, but the client needs to have it installed on their machine. Once installed, even JMF applets will have access to the multimedia aspects of the client machines. Just a warning though, JMF is very involved and even a versed java programmer will need some time to work through it.