All About Interop : PHP

It just got easier to build REST apps in .NET

DotNetInterop — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:48:00 GMT

The REST starter kit that we launched at PDC is now live! :: http://www.msdn.com/wcf/rest .

The WCF REST Starter Kit is a set of features, Visual Studio templates, samples and guidance that help people build REST apps using WCF. WCF, part of the .NET Framework, got some enhancements for REST support in the .NET 3.5 release. This starter kit is a bunch of blueprints and supporting material to make it easier to use what is in the Framework for REST.

Like, blueprints and guidelines for how to do caching, security, error handling, help page support, conditional PUT, push style streaming, type based dispatch and semi-structured XML support. Whoa!

The WCF REST Starter Kit also provides Visual Studio templates for creating REST style services such as an Atom feed service, a REST-RPC hybrid service, Resource singleton and collection services and an Atom Publishing Protocol service. In addition, there are samples, documentation and other guidance that help to use these new capabilities.

The goal is to provide a toolset that simplifies building RESTful services today, and to take feedback from the developer community on the features provided in the WCF REST Starter Kit that will shape future REST capabilities in WCF 4.0.

SQL Server driver for PHP

DotNetInterop — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:50:00 GMT

In case you missed it: The first CTP (Community Technology Preview) of the SQL Server 2005 Driver for PHP, is now available for download from Microsoft.

Microsoft announced the imminent release of this thing during the Zend/PHP Conference 10 days ago [news]. The CTP release of the driver is not suitable for production use, but is usable for testing and experimentation. It's intended to provide PHP developers an early look, and to solicit feedback from the community to help refine the design of the API, the feature set, and the target scenarios. The official release of the driver is expected in the first half of 2008.

Nice! Combine this with the IIS+PHP integration, and soon you will have a solid, high-performance PHP platform on Windows and SQL. If you do PHP, download the software, explore the sample applications and provide feedback to Microsoft via the SQL+PHP team blog.

PHP on Vista with IIS7

DotNetInterop — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 03:08:00 GMT

I upgraded my work machine, back in October. My old standby IBM Thinkpad T30, after years of loyal service, was starting to fall apart. Random pieces were coming loose from the case and the keyboard was no longer delivering "Five 9's reliability". Sometimes the keys worked, sometimes not. Also the disk drive was giving me block errors, and the fan was generating some new sounds. It was time to move on... (snif) The Thinkpad was really a nice machine for me.

I got a new HP (Compaq) nc8430 - this is a sweet, svelte new wide-screen design. Much faster than the thinkpad, and with a huge screen, huge hard drive. It came with Windows XP pre-installed, but before I ever logged in, I installed a clean build of Windows Vista on it. Nice graphics!

I have been using the nc8430 as my main machine for some time now, it's working out nicely for me. I turned off the disk indexing, it was slowing everything down. Also I got some updated drivers from HP and all the various built-in devices (bluetooth, wireless nic, etc) now are working well. I hadn't migrated everything over to this new machine, I'm sort of doing it in phases. Previously, I installed Visual Studio and SQL Express on it. This week I moved PHP onto it. PHP works very nicely with the new IIS7 that is part of Vista.

Why would I install PHP? you ask... For interop testing and demonstrations, of course! I like to demonstrate practical interop between Microsoft technologies, particularly .NET, and other technologies, as much as I can. So PHP + .NET is a key interop combination. But also PHP + IIS7, and PHP + SQL2005, and so on.

The Thinkpad had PHP 4.3.1 on it, but for the new machine I am getting current - so I put on PHP 5.2.0 instead. I have SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (free download!) On the thinkpad, I had no trouble connecting PHP to SQL Server 2000 - this new combination was not much different. Simpler, I'd say, due to the better design of IIS7.

download and install PHP, as per BillS' instructions.
copy the php.ini file to c:\windows
Edit the php.ini file to enable php_mssql.dll (uncomment the line)
install php_mssql.dll into c:\windows\system32
get the new ntwdblib.dll (version 2000.80.194) from your SQL Server and install it in c:\windows\system32. (don't use the ntwdblib.dll from the php 5.2.0 zip)
Use the SQL Configuration Manager to enable remote connections to SQL Server Express. Enable named pipes, TCP/IP, and VIA

Ba-da-boom, you're done. Go to town.

What about the Interop?

For now, PHP apps can connect to SQL and perform any queries at all, including taking advantage of the new XML stuff in SQL 2005. And PHP can generate XML as output, which can then be consumed by any .NET app, including, for example, a WCF app that consumes RSS or POX. I'll be looking into examples of all of these in the near future.

cheers!

FastCGI on IIS

DotNetInterop — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 20:41:00 GMT

Bill Staples of Microsoft blogged on the newly announced partnership between Zend and Microsoft, one of the first deliverables is a FastCGI implementation on Windows and IIS, which allows PHP to run faster and more reliably on Windows. Nice!

-Dino

.NET and PHP on CodePlex

DotNetInterop — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 19:41:00 GMT

CodePlex is Microsoft's new community development site. One of the interesting projects there is focused on interop - between PHP and .NET.

http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=Phalanger