Phalanger can be used to create solutions that combine .NET and PHP in ways that are not possible with the standard PHP interpreter. Thanks to Phalanger extensions, PHP programs can directly use .NET classes and .NET programs can dynamically invoke PHP scripts or use functions and classes implemented in PHP.
Although PHP boasts of being the most widely used environment for web application development, it has been traditionally considered as not suitable for the enterprise. InfoQ has conducted a virtual panel regarding the evolution of the language/platform and its suitability in enterprise environments.
Phalanger 3 is out with improved support for PHP namespaces, Mono/Linux, and C# interoperability.
Today, Facebook and Heroku announced an integration between the their respective developer platforms that simplifies the development of Facebook Apps. With just a few clicks, you can select your language and configure which type of App you want to develop (Web Site, Canvas or Page Tab).
The Model-View-Controller pattern is pretty much dominating professional, customer facing website design these days. While single-file scripts and form builder technologies still have a place, MVC seems to strike the right balance for many developers. The Fuel framework for PHP intends to capitalize on the work done by earlier MVC frameworks such as Ruby on Rails.
Phalanger is a PHP compiler for the .NET and Mono runtime. It is currently capable of running popular PHP based applications such as WordPress. With the exception of indirect invocation of static methods, Phalanger now offers across the board performance improvements over PHP.
Tiobe's award is given to the programming language that gained most market share in 2010. Objective-C was the leader for most of 2010 but got lost ground in the last couple of months. Python grew it's market share by 1.81% since January 2010, which is nearly 4 times the overall marketshare of SAP's programming language ABAP.
Zend recently announced an 'unlimited subscription' licensing option for its PHP products, in support of cloud computing. Virtualization and Cloud Computing challenge traditional concepts of software licensing, e.g. one license per user, one license per server, because of the dynamism and variability of running instances inherent in both concepts. Zend offers one way to solve this problem.
Caucho has announced that it will support the Java EE6 Web Profile in the next iteration of their lightweight application server, Resin 4.0. The Java EE6 Web Profile specifies a lighter, modern subset of the full Java EE6 specification, which must contend with backwards compatability.
Microsoft is continuing to court the PHP market with drivers. With the newest offerings, Microsoft is adding support for SQL Azure, their cloud-computing platform.
Evans Data's published the result of its scripting language survey. PHP, Ruby and Python are the favorite choices of more than 500 developers and IT Professionals. Scripting languages usage in the enterprise has changed with time, the survey outlines the drawbacks and merits of each language.
