Please excuse my distinct lack of knowledge in this field. Software development is not my forte.
I am currently about to commence work on a project of which there is a large system built using PowerBuilder with an Oracle Enterprise database to serve the data up.
I want to build a nicer interface for the system and believe it is possible to use web technologies (my background) to do so. Can anyone confirm if it is possible to use PHP with PowerBuilder or is there a way in which I can interface my build with PowerBuilder?
I don't think there is a "good" way to incorporate PB & PHP but if there is a will there is always a way.
One unusual but possible way of mixing the technologies might be to write an IIS handler with PowerBuilder.NET, or you could build the handler using Visual Studio and call a PowerBuilder .NET Assembly from the handler. I find it is easier to build the handler using Visual Studio myself because I had problems getting PB.NET to inherit from HTTPHandler or using the .NET interface. Doing this would be like re-inventing ASP.NET as it basically just processes .ASP files and kicks out HTML/Javascript/CSS,etc and you'd be writing a handler for a different file extension (say .pb or .powerbuilder) and spitting out your favorite web code based on what filename and/or arguments you used in the URL.
I made something like this not long ago just to see if I could do it and it wasn't too difficult. Eventually I'll post the code on my PB blog. I've seen another implementation of something like this using CGI which is older technology, not as good as using a handler for busy sites.
Again this probably wasn't the answer you were looking for but it is an answer. Good luck.
Related
I am developing a new page and can not decide witch server technology I should use. I will try to describe as best I can, what I am making and hoping someone will have some advice for me.
The choice I have to made is PHP vs ASP.NET and in case of ASP.NET MsSQL vs PostgreSQL.
I must say I already spend a few months comparing and experimenting with this 2 products (and know both for many years, but for small projects).
So if I get to the point:
My web page will definitely be SPA. I don't intend to change some div content to achieve that, but open different content in dialogs or if you know KendoUI windows.
Everything else could be adapted to the selected framework. I don't plan to have many different views, but those few will heavily depend on data from database. The core of my page will be one view bind to a table with few 10/100 thousand records.
I am using jQuery to get data from server. I started with PHP, but it soon became very large project, tons of files for handling users, roles, access to file system, managing database, quering database, editing database, handling different language support... I use try version of zend studio which is great framework (you get debugger which is a little bugging from time to time) but can not compete with visual studio.
I also read on internet that all big sites (except SO) use PHP because they started small and when they became big there is no way to migrate to different server technology.
I get problems with requires files (there are to many) if I include from index.php there is different path that from AjaxCall/ProcessLogin.php. I always forgot to include some file and get unexpected result in client. ASP.NET would solve this problem. I huge disadvantage is also unknown types in PHP. I call function which return array of objects populate from database and I don't know nothing about object structure, but when using LINQ to SQL I know everything. It bothers me also that can not have 2 functions with same name and different parameters. LINQ to SQL is also amazing. And so on. Those who use both of them, you can say what advantages has developing in Visual studio c# over Zend studio in PHP.
I know (from what I read in past months) that PHP will get me better performance, that sometimes could be slower because of the interpreter. Again, I just use functions to get some data and on client side use telerik KendoUI for rendering contents.
My questions that I can not answer myself is is ASP.NET the right choise if I don't plan to use any other feature then [WebMethod] (any server side events, ASP.NET controls...)? Probably I should go with ASP.NET Web API or ASP.NET single page application? I read tutorial how can I call method with jQuery. I also found this thread. But I need to decide if I stick with PHP and do some hard work for stuff that I mention up, or I should use ASP.NET, get some really nice stuff on account of performance.
I must say that cost are not the problem. Hosting windows server, Visual studio ...
tldr; use PHP's Laravel Framework, it's a very good framework to start and it grows with you. Also it's heavily influenced by ASP.NET and Rails, just for the PHP world. Build your REST API with laravel and use jQuery for the AJAX stuff. Querying the database (e.g. postgres) with Laravel is amazing, just write something like User::where('age', 21)->get();.
Check spa-cart.com
Already much features with PHP SPA CMS
Does anyone know a BPMN 2.0 designer/modeler and process execution engine based on PHP? In the same context, does anyone know an ESB accepting PHP script?
Does anyone know a BPMN 2.0 designer/modeler and process execution
engine based on PHP?
You could use probably almost every PHP framework like symfony to build some ESB functionality into your application but it generaly seems a bit odd to build an ESB in PHP. I don't think PHP is the right technology to that kind of architecture since PHP was developed to be a front end tool. This brings limitation like the lack of non-blocking execution, timeout problems, complicated handling of asynchronus processes.
In the same context, does anyone know an ESB accepting PHP script?
So my recommendation would be:
Check if you really need an ESB *
If you do, choose one among the stable systems, e.g. http://www.jboss.org/jbpm or http://www.mulesoft.org/
Integrate your PHP script as a service using webservices.
* An ESB is not something you can drop in like a jQuery Script so better think twice here.
Related question:
PHP and ESB (with Mule) (ESB: Enterprise Service Bus)
you could also use a mix of the camunda BPM tools (which all are open source).
The camunda BPM platform with camunda BPM PHP SDK or your own PHP solution via REST API and camunda BPM javascript renderer would provide the process execution and rendering of diagrams for e.g. monitoring purposes.
The camunda BPM modeler (Eclipse Plugin) deals with the modeling/design aspect.
You can find all these tools here
While not a BPMN suite, at least a bit of Workflow is part of ezComponents.
Please be aware, that ezComponents recently failed to get an Apache project after staying some time in incubator...
I have developed a PHP web application, but a client insists on a real Windows application, since he doesn't like running the software inside a browser.
Are there any solutions for this, any compilers to turn a web project into a Windows exe ?
I have looked at Phc-Win , but that seems more suited for small command line utils, not for entire web-applications...
UPDATE:
just found this myself, both look quite promising...
http://www.zzee.com/phpexe/
http://www.exeoutput.com/index.php
There's no tool for this, short of a simple wrapper app that embeds a browser inside an otherwise normal application window. Your PHP app would have to be completely re-written to include ALL of the overhead code necessary to build a GUI - basically all the 'display' stuff that a browser does automatically, would have to added to your app.
Well some of you did not google good enough:
http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-cross-platform-application-development/
Supports most of the "web-languages" to write native Applications.
Tutorial Reference for Appcelerator: http://appceleratortitanium.com/tutorials/3-appcelerator-titanium-tutorial-beginners.html
Quote:
"Q: What languages can I use to make desktop apps?
A: Javascript, PHP, Python, Ruby, HTML, HTML5, and CSS."
Not exactly what you are looking for: http://www.roadsend.co/home/index.php?pageID=compiler
You may look into "HipHop" (made by Facebook): Converts PHP to compileable C++-
There's a tool for this. :-) I never used it but you can try this: Winbinder.
It is simple to compile your PHP source code into an executable. Facebook released a compiler for PHP in early-2010, called HipHop, which aims to create C++. You could then compile this code, for example using gcc, to machine-code.
The more difficult point for a complex Web-App like yours is the user interface. When compiling the way I described above, the application can be run from command line - this might work for simple tasks, but not, if your application returns HTML.
One possibility to solve this problem is PHP-GTK. PHP-GTK is a API for GTK (the graphical user interface used by Linux Ubuntu by default), written in PHP. Using this solution would have to read some documentation about this API, and you would need to rewrite some parts of your program, but it would probably be the most beautiful solution, because it would create a "native" experience.
Another possible solution could involve Adobe AIR, which lets your create programs for the desktop, using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but I don't know if and how this would work together with your compiled PHP.
Please also note that it isn't absolutely necessary to compile your PHP for it to run on the client's computer; You could also ship the PHP-interperter right with your (uncompiled) PHP-script. Of course, compiling brings benefits, such as faster execution of the program.
-- André
I'm looking to develop a Win32 desktop app - a one off, for a personal need. A GUI is not scrictly needed, though would be a bonus.
What is needed:
The ability to monitor the window title of a specific window.
The ability to run DOS commands when this window title changes.
I hope my programming ability is up to this - I feel I'm pretty good with PHP, but I'm not ready to spend time learning OO for this one-off project.
What non OO (or at least not mandatorily OO) languages are there for desktop apps that might be suitable for a beginner on a task like?
Any other, more hacky approaches are welcome too - batch scripts etc.
Many thanks for any advice,
Jack
Whether or not the language supports OO doesn't really matter for your purposes. After all, PHP supports objects and you seem to do just fine with it.
Personally, i'd recommend Java or C# to get started with. The communities for these two languages are huge and there are plenty of tutorials online to help you get started.
It's extremely easy to get starting writing C# with Visual Studio Express. And a good hello world tutorial.
Also, if you stick with C# you can take advantage of WMI which will allow you to do everything you need for this project (and much much more).
Lastly, most windows machines will be able to run your application without having to install anything extra and Visual Studio builds the .exe for you as part of the build process.
You can use PHP for desktop apps if you really want to. Just install the php CLI.
You can even do a gui for your desktop app in php: http://gtk.php.net/
EDIT: I'm not sure how easily you can call win32 api functions from PHP, however. There look to be a few articles about this online and a SO question: How to call winapi functions from PHP?
I would vote for Python using the included TkInter module for GUI. Dead simple to use.
Widgets aren't the prettiest looking, but development is rapid.
EDIT: I mistook "non-OO" in the question for "OO". Python is most definitely not "non-OO", but but is very well suited to doing what you asked.
You could write this in pretty much any mainstream language supported by Windows. C or C++ are obvious choices. C# and Visual Basic .NET are going to require the .NET Framework ... not a bad thing, but perhaps more than you want to tackle for a simple project. Come to think of it, you might be able to do this with JScript or VBScript, although I'm not clear on what API functions you have easy access to. And I have to believe that it's possible to do with PowerShell with just a little work.
Your options are wide open.
F#
It's an awesome piece of work, has access to the Framework class libraries, supports GUI development, really easy parallel programming, compiles to IL (same as C#) but has a really concise functional syntax.
I've recently started a new web development project for an embedded device and wanted to solicit some recommendations for technologies to use. The device will serve HTML pages which include AJAX code to retrieve data from a JSON server. We're tentatively using Cherokee as the web server, though we're not tied to it.
Currently, I'm considering the following technologies:
Write it all in PHP. I know it's big, slow, and bloated, but I've got about 10MB available for the web interface (a lot for an embedded system), and we won't be seeing a lot of traffic on any of these devices. It does need to seem responsive for the users, however (pages should load in less than a second).
FastCGI + a C program - We're using an in-memory database, so the C program could interact with the database directly through the API. This would have much better performance than PHP, but development time and reliability is a concern since C isn't very well-suited for web development.
Lua + Kepler - This seems like a nice middle ground between performance and development time. However, I've never worked with Lua, so I'm not really sure how to implement it in an embedded web project. I'm also uncertain as to how well it integrates with the Cherokee web server.
So any opinions or past experiences with the above stated technologies? Any others I should include in the list?
Thanks,
Alex
When I was in this area, I used Lua and a simple FastCGI runner (Luaetta [for I'm sure the latest source would be available if you asked the guy] , though I'm also sure that's not the only one, and there's Kepler of course), spawned by lighttpd.
It performed quite well on an embedded media player, and was used for remotely accessing content and controlling the device. Though I don't maintain it anymore, you can find more about it at http://matthewwild.co.uk/projects/wooble . If you think the source would help just poke me for it, it's currently only available via a package manager but I can fix that given the motivation.
Another (again Lua) project in this area is LuCI. These guys are dedicated to making a web interface for embedded devices (routers specifically), and have produced a nice framework with lots of supporting libraries geared towards that kind of system.
I wouldn't be concerned with not knowing Lua. If you know any language then you can pick up Lua in a day or two, the manual documents the whole language and is quite short.
How about looking at HipHop, Facebook's PHP compiler?
https://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php/wiki
That way you can write your code in PHP and effectively compile it to C++.
ASP.NET. Assuming that you wouldn't be interested in Embedded Windows Server 2008, you could still leverage ASP.NET by incorporating Mono into Cherokee. You could leverage Visual Studio as your RAD development environment and use things like ASP.NET MVC 2. A lot of third party user controls will also 'just work' with Mono (Telerik Announces Support for their ASP.NET controls on Mono!).