PHP is a very popular scripting language written by and for web developers: it is quick to learn, easy to deploy and provides many of the programming tools a web developer could wish for ... all in a single, free, cross-platform, open-source package. PHP enables you to build highly interactive, dynamic, e-commerce web sites using server-side scripting techniques similar to or better than those offered by Microsoft's ASP (Active Server Pages) and Sun Microsystems' JSP (Java Server Pages).


Because PHP scripts run on the web server, they avoid most of the incompatibility and maintenance costs associated with client-side (browser-based) approaches to interactivity, e.g. Javascript. On the other hand, PHP scripts can be more efficient and portable than some other server-side approaches (including traditional CGI programs), e.g. PHP scripts developed for MS Windows 2000, SQL Server and the IIS web server, can be deployed easily and profitably on robust enterprise class Unix systems running the Apache web server and Oracle. In short, PHP enables cross-platform, vendor-neutral solutions, which can be built and deployed on any popular web architecture. PHP provides a wealth of tools for interacting with, transferring and transforming data stored in any number of ways, e.g. it can handle plain text, HTML, XML, XSLT, Postcript, PDF, ODBC, SQL, most RDBMs, encrypted authentication, secure sockets (SSL) and many other secure transaction procedures.