WEB TECHNOLOGY IN LAMP TECHNOLOGY

WEB TECHNOLOGY IN LAMP TECHNOLOGY

LAMP is a shorthand term for a web application platform consisting of Linux, Apache, My SQL and one of Perl or PHP. Together, these open source tools provide a world-class platform for deploying web applications. Running on the Linux operating system, the Apache web server, the My SQL database and the programming languages, PHP or Perl deliver all of the components needed to build secure scalable dynamic websites. LAMP has been touted as “the killer app” of the open source world.

With many LAMP sites running Ebusiness logic and Ecommerce site and requiring 24x 7 uptime, ensuring the highest levels of data and application availability is critical. For organizations that have taken advantage of LAMP, these levels of availability are ensured by providing constant monitoring of the end-to-end application stack and immediate recovery of any failed solution components. Some also supports the movement of LAMP components among servers to remove the need for downtime associated with planned system maintenance.

The paper gives an overview of LINUX, APACHE, MYSQL, and mainly on PHP and its advantage over other active generation tools for interactive web design and its interface with the advanced database like MYSQL and finally the conclusion is provided.








CONTENTS


 Introduction
 Linux
 Apache
 My SQL
 Feature included in my sql
 PHP
 Technologies on the client side
 Technologies on the server side
 The benefits of using PHP server side processing
 Browser and its issues
 Applying LAMP
 When not on to use LAMP?
 Advantages of LAMP
 Conclusion


















INTRODUCTION:
One of the great "secrets" of almost all websites (aside from those that publish static .html pages) is that behind the scenes, the web server is actually just one part of a two or three tiered application server system. In the open source world, this explains the tremendous popularity of the Linux-Apache-My SQL-PHP (LAMP) environment. LAMP provides developers with a traditional two tiered application development platform. There is a database, and a "smart" web server able to communicate with the database. Clients only talk to the web server , while the web server transparently talks to the database when required. The following diagram illustrates how a typical LAMP server works.
Fig. Example architecture of LAMP
By combining these tools you can rapidly develop and deliver applications. Each of these tools is the best in its class and a wealth of information is available for the beginner. Because LAMP is easy to get started with yet capable of delivering enterprise scale applications the LAMP software model just might be the way to go for your next, or your first application. Let’ take a look at the parts of the system.

LINUX:

LINUX is presently the most commonly used implementation of UNIX. Built from the ground up as a UNIX work-alike operating system for the Intel 386/486/pentium family of chips by a volunteer team of coders on the internet LINUX has revitalized the old-school UNIX community and added many new converts. LINUX development is led by Linux Torvalds. The core of the system is the LINUX kernel. On top of the kernel a LINUX distribution will usually utilize many tools from the Free Software Foundation’s GNU project. LINUX has gained a huge amount of momentum and support, both from individuals and large corporations such as IBM. LINUX provides a standards compliant robust operating system that inherits the UNIX legacy for security and stability. Originally developed for Intel x86 systems LINUX has been ported to small embedded systems on one end of the spectrum on up to large mainframes and clusters. LINUX can run on most common hardware platforms.

APACHE:

Apache is the most popular web server on the Internet. Apache like LINUX, My SQL and PHP is an open source project. Apache is based on the NCSA (National Center for Super Computing Applications) web server. In 1995-1996 a group of developers coalesced around a collection of patches to the original NCSA web server. This group evolved into the Apache Software foundation. With the release of Apache 2.0 apache has become a robust well documented multi-threaded web server. Particularly appealing in the 2.0 release is improved support for non-UNIX systems. Apache can run on a large number of hardware and software platforms. Since 1996 Apache has been the most popular web server on the Internet. Presently apache holds 67% of the market.

MySQL:

MySQL is a fast flexible Relational Database. My SQL is the most widely used Relational Database Management System in the world with over 4 million instances in use. MySQL is high-performance, robust, multi-threaded and multi user. MySQL utilizes client server architecture. Today, more than 4 million web sites create, use, and deploy MySQL-based applications. MySQL’ focus is on stability and speed. Supports for all aspects of the SQL standard that do not conflict with the performance goals are supported.

Features include:

 Portability. Support for a wide variety of Operating Systems and hardware
 Speed and Reliability
 Ease of Use
 Multi user support
 Scalability
 Standards Compliant
 Replication
 Low TCO (total cost of ownership)
 Quality Documentation
 Dual license (free and non-free)
 Full Text searching
 Support for transactions
 Wide application support


PHP:


What's next in the field of web design? It's already here. Today's webmasters are deluged with available technologies to incorporate into their designs. The ability to learn everything is fast becoming impossibility. So your choice in design technologies becomes increasingly important if you don't want to be the last man standing and left behind when everyone else has moved on. But before we get to that, lets do a quick review of the previous generation of web design.
In the static generation of web design, pages were mostly html pages that relied solely on static text and images to relay they information over the internet. Here the web pages lacked x and y coordinate positioning, and relied on hand coded tables for somewhat accurate placement of images and text. Simple, and straight to the point, web design was more like writing a book and publishing it online.
The second generation of web design (the one we are in now), would be considered the ACTIVE generation. For quite a while now the internet has been drifting towards interactive web designs which allow users a more personal and dynamic experience when visiting websites. No longer is a great website simply a bunch of static text and images. A great website is now one which allows, indeed, encourages user interaction. No longer does knowing HTML inside out make you a webmaster, although that does help a great deal!! Now, knowing how to use interactive technologies isn't just helpful, it's almost a requirement. Here are a few of the interactive technologies available for the webmasters of today.

Technologies on the client side:
1. Active X Controls: Developed by Microsoft these are only fully functional on the Internet Explorer web browser .This eliminates them from being cross platform, and thus eliminates them from being a webmasters number one technology choice for the future. Disabling Active X Controls on the IE web browser is something many people do for security, as the platform has been used by many for unethical and harmful things.

2. Java Applets: Java Applets are programs that are written in the Java Language. They are self contained and are supported on cross platform web browsers. While not all browsers work with Java Applets, many do. These can be included in web pages in almost the same way images can.

3. Dhtml and Client-Side Scripting: DHTML, java script, and vbscript. They all have in common the fact that all the code is transmitted with the original webpage and the web browser translates the code and create pages that are much more dynamic than static html pages. Vbscript is only supported by Internet Explorer. That again makes for a bad choice for the web designer wanting to create cross platform web pages. With Linux and other operating systems gaining in popularity, it makes little sense to lock you into one platform.
Of all the client side options available java script has proved to be the most popular and most widely used; once your an expert with HTML.

Technologies on the server side:
1. CGI: This stands for Common Gateway Interface. It wasn't all that long ago that the only dynamic solution for webmasters was CGI. Almost every webserver in use today supports CGI in one form or another. The most widely used CGI language is Perl. Python, C, and C++ can also be used as CGI programming languages, but are not nearly as popular as Perl. The biggest disadvantage to CGI for the server side is in it's lack of scalability. Although mod_perl for Apache and Fast CGI attempt to help improve performance in this department, CGI is probably not the future of web design because of this very problem.
2. ASP: Another of Microsoft's attempt's to "improve" things. ASP is a proprietary scripting language. Performance is best on Microsoft's own servers of course, and the lack of widespread COM support has reduced the number of webmasters willing to bet the farm on another one of Microsoft's silver bullets.

3. Java Server Pages and Java Servlets: Server side java script is Nets capes answer to Microsoft's ASP technology. Since this technology is supported almost exclusively on the Netscape Enterprise Sever, the likelihood that this will ever become a serious contender in the battle for the webmaster's attention is highly unlikely.

4. PHP: PHP is the most popular scripting language for developing dynamic web based applications. Originally developed by Rasmus Lerdorf as a way of gathering web form data without using CGI it has quickly grown and gathered a large collection of modules and features. The beauty of PHP is that it is easy to get started with yet it is capable of extremely robust and complicated applications. As an embedded scripting language PHP code is simply inserted into an html document and when the page is delivered the PHP code is parsed and replaced with the output of the embedded PHP commands. PHP is easier to learn and generally faster than PERL based CGI. However, quite unlike ASP, PHP is totally platform independent and there are versions for most operating systems and servers.

The benefits of using PHP server side processing include the following:
 Reduces network traffic.
 Avoids cross platform issues with operating systems and web browsers.
 Can send data to the client that isn't on the client computer.
 Quicker loading time. After the server interprets all the php code, the resulting page is transmitted as HTML.
 Security is increased, since things can be coded into PHP that will never be viewed from the browser.


BROWSER:

Since all the tools are in place to deliver html content to a browser it is assumed that control of the application will be through a browser based interface. Using the browser and HTML as the GUI (Graphical User Interface) for your application is frequently the most logical choice. The browser is familiar and available on most computers and operating systems. Rendering of html is fairly standard, although frustrating examples of incompatibilities remain. Using html and html-form elements displayed within a browser is easier than building a similarly configured user interface from the ground up. If your application is internal you may want to develop for a specific browser and OS combination. This saves you the problems of browser inconsistencies and allows you take advantage of OS specific tools.

APPLYING LAMP:

1. Storing our data: Our data is going to be stored in the MySQL Database. One instance of MySQL can contain many databases. Since our data will be stored in MySQL it will be searchable, extendable, and accessible from many different machines or from the whole World Wide Web.
2. User Interface: Although MySQL provides a command line client that we can use to enter our data we are going to build a friendlier interface. This will be a browser-based interface and we will use PHP as the glue between the browser and the Database.
3.Programming: PHP is the glue that takes the input from the browser and adds the data to the MySQL database. For each action add, edit, or delete you would build a PHP script that takes the data from the html form converts it into a SQL query and updates the database.

4.Security: The standard method is to use the security and authentication features of the apache web server. The tool mod_auth allows for password based authentication. You can also use allow/deny directives to limit access based on location. Using one or both of these apache tools you can limit access based on who they are or where they are connecting from. Other security features that you may want to use would be mod_auth_ldap, mod_auth_oracle, certificate based authentication provided by mod_ssl.


When not to use LAMP?

Applications not well suited for LAMP would include applications that have a frequent need for exchanging large amounts of transient data or that have particular and demanding needs for state maintenance. It should be remembered that at the core http is a stateless protocol and although cookies allow for some session maintenance they may not be satisfactory for all applications. If you find yourself fighting the http protocol at every turn and avoiding the “url as a resource mapped to the file system” arrangement of web applications then perhaps LAMP is not the best choice for that particular application.

ADVANTAGES OF LAMP:

 Seamless integration with Linux, Apache and MySQL to ensure the highest levels of availability for websites running on LAMP.
 Full 32bit and 64bit support for Xeon, Itanium and Opteron-based systems runs on enterprise Linux distributions from Red Hat and SuSE.
 Supports Active/Active and Active/Standby LAMP Configurations of up to 32 nodes.
 Data can reside on shared SCSI, Fiber Channel, Network Attached Storage devices or on replicated volumes.
 Maximizes Ecommerce revenues, minimizes Ebusiness disruption caused by IT outages.
 Automated availability monitoring, failover recovery, and fail back of all LAMP application and IT-infrastructure resources.
• Intuitive JAVA-based web interface provides at-a-glance LAMP status and simple administration.
• Easily adapted to sites running Oracle, DB2, and PostgreSQL .
• Solutions also exist for other Linux application environments including Rational Clear Case, Send mail, Lotus Domino and my SAP.

CONCLUSION:
While Flash, Active X, and other proprietary elements will continue to creep in and entice webmasters, in the end, compatibility issues and price of development will dictate what eventually win out in the next generation of web design. However, for the foreseeable future PHP, HTML, and databases are going to be in the future of interactive web design, and that's where I'm placing my bets. Open Source continues to play an important role in driving web technologies. Even though Microsoft would like to be the only player on the field, Open Source, with its flexibility will almost certainly be the winner in the end. Betting the farm on LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP) seems much wiser to me than the alternative (Microsoft, IIS, Asp) ... not to mention it's a much less expensive route to follow.