Reflection

Files can be the appropriate choice for many applications. This can be in place of or in addition to databases.

At this point, it would be natural if you concluded that the PHP system offers more functionality and in a simpler, more direct way than the ASP system. However, it could be argued that the ASP system provides more protection of your system. It also is true that ASP provides the generality of working with JavaScript or VBScript, and we have “stacked the decks” somewhat by using MySQL for which there is a library of PHP functions. The open-source supporters would say that PHP (and MySQL, Linux, and Apache, the server software) together provide all the protection that you would want and in a way that you can design and configure for yourself. As you continue studying this book and when you finish it, you might want to go online to investigate comparisons of these two approaches. A goal of this text is to provide you knowledge and experience in both systems as well as the background to learn other middleware software and better understand any debate on which software is superior.