I’ve tried getting Phalanger to work on VS 2005 and it’s a lot harder than it sounds to get that sucker started. I’m running on Vista Ultimate on my new Dell XPS and I’ll be using Visual Web Developer Express; I am confident that Phalanger won’t work for that suite.

Short of splitting hairs, I think we all know the scope of the test fairly well.

Anyway, is the usual installation for LAMP using interpreted php zend thingie?

I’ve developed in pascal, basic, delphi, classic asp, vb, vb.net, c#, java, php, and ruby. Been paid for most of those languages. Point being, anyone who’s ever touched php knows you run with a opcode cacher or whatever they’re calling themselves these days. And the things have been around for more than five years.

The argument of “I just ran it out-of-the-box so it’s a fair comparison” is a poor argument because php’s “out-of-the-box” experience is on linux, not windows. PHP is a dog on windows and everyone knows it:
http://www.google.com/search?q=php+slow+on+windows&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Which is why the recent announcement that MS is working with Zend on fastcgi is so interesting.

To further this thread, what’s interesting about php on .net that you didn’t have before is large corporations which standardize on a particular technology (like .net as a platform) now have the ability to run php within their own guidelines. Windows admins, notable for being poor at picking up anything not written about on msdn, should be able to deploy, administer, and support a php app on .net without even knowing it’s written in php.

-Dan

But. I forgot link to it

Can you give me URL to the XRumer description? screenshots, etc.

Thanks

http://programming.reddit.com/info/2nzuz/comments

Attention: PHP executes twice as fast when it’s run on ASP.NET

BAD TITLE, MISLEADING and you know it

Naturally compiled code executes faster then any interpreted code on any platform. That said, there are many ways to speed up php execution on windows or any platform, probably the best is to purchase a copy of Zend Encoder:
http://www.zend.com/products/zend_guard

First time I hear about Phalanger so its an interesting read but a title like: compile PHP code on ASP.net would be *much more* honest and interesting then reading about misleading titles/statements on execution time.

I’ve had no problem handling the facts; it’s not my fault that you don’t like them.

PHP runs faster when it’s compiled with .NET than it does running on Zend interpretation; this is a fact and its integrity has been weakly challenged but not disproved by any stretch of the imagination.

No one has presented any data demonstrating that out of the box Zend interpretation runs faster than Phalanger binaries. Go ahead and try it; inform us.

In the email I sent you I’ve given you an opportunity to throw some of your own ideas about PHP out there in a full post that i will publish on this site. If you want to use the opportunity to demonstrate methods in which PHP will execute faster than it does with Phalanger then that’s up to you.

I am very supportive of comments; it seems to me that there’s some interest in other technologies for improving PHP performance, technologies that I was only vaguely aware of, and from these comments I can potentially produce another post on the subject.

Do you think I am being unsupportive of comments? The only reason I’ve replied is to more or less clarify why I produced the article in the first place, for the sake of having my readers understand my blog’s intent. I’m by no means trying to stifle discussion, only stifling attacks against my blog’s integrity and intent

I didn’t run any of these tests; I reported on what the Phalanger group did. You should tell them to rerun those tests on a fair environment if you have a problem with how they did it.

If I wrote a headline saying that “Attention: Under Windows IIS PHP Can Be Compiled with Phalanger to Run at Approximately 100% Faster Speeds Than it Can Under Traditional Zend Interpretation” do you think anyone would read it?

Blogging is just as much about writing effective copy as it is about providing sufficient cause to start discussion. Titles like this one draws enough interest to spark the discussion necessary to ultimately produce better information for my audience.

Look at the valuable information that the comments for this article has yielded; now people who are really interested in learning about not just .NET, but about increasing the performance of PHP, have a list of resources they can turn to for doing just that. The criticism that some of the visitors to my site have provided via comments ultimately improves the quality of information on my site.

Blogging is not about the original writer being right or wrong, but it is ultimately about gathering the most complete and best information; I alone couldn’t possibly gather all the possible ways you can optimize a PHP application. Readers like you and others who leave feedback complete the information gathering to one location.

I’ve not cast FUD on anything (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt; I had to look it up.) If anything I’ve objectively directed my readers to the facts on codeproject and the Phalanger website, regardless of what some readers may think of said facts. I’ve entertained criticism and discussion in a fair and respectful manner; I could choose to moderate comments or ignore criticism entirely, but I haven’t because criticism of my articles ultimately makes for better information, which is my objective. If it takes a controversial title to acquire such information, then so be it

I really don’t care much about what my readers think of me personally, but I care a lot about writing on subjects that they enjoy and I care a lot about having the best possible information, even if it’s provided from readers, other bloggers, or my harshest critics.

I’d be more than happy to write a subsequent post about PHP optimization/bytecode caching techniques should the readers of this blog want to read it. I even have a catchy title thought of for it already

Regardless, thank you for your comment!

A half-truth would be if I claimed that Phalanger was the fastest available platform for PHP, which I didn’t.

Stating “Attention: PHP executes twice as fast when it’s run on ASP.NET” implies that it is faster then PHP and the assertion is it is for all aplications even though one is given as a token example.
If you stated that PHP was run in an non-optimal setup on a webserver that is far from friendly to PHP not to mention the old version then it would be alot more factual.
If you re-run these tests with a fair testing environment (linux/apache/op cache vs IIS/.NET or even just an op cache on IIS) and it is still faster then I’ll be the first to say ‘wow well done’, untill then it is complete utter FUD.

In addition, if you read my article all the way through, you would have read the area where I addressed platform dependence

Well this is a start, there is more to platform indepedance then hosting options

The world doesn`t need more people advertising FUD on both sides get an ounce of skeptiscism and don’t be a puppet.

If you can point out how my article is only telling half the truth, please do so. Is it not true that PHP compiled in .NET runs twice as fast as Zend interpretation according to the Phalanger group?

A half-truth would be if I claimed that Phalanger was the fastest available platform for PHP, which I didn’t.

In addition, if you read my article all the way through, you would have read the area where I addressed platform dependence

Great comment! I’m simply comparing traditional PHP execution using the Zend interpreter against the .NET methodology using Phalanger; the comparison stands as valid (rather than Apples and Oranges) from that point of view.

I did not write the article with the intention of determining what the absolute best performance system for PHP is, given that this is a .NET blog. I happen to like PHP and I saw Phalanger as an exciting opportunity to incorporate it into some of my .NET projects.

When I wrote the article I was aware of different PHP compilation techniques, but I simply was writing about PHP compilation in the scope of .NET.

And what you say about the bench-marking is also true; I think this merits some more thorough bench marking on the behalf of the Phalanger developers, don’t you?

Check out: http://itst.net/654-php-on-fire-three-opcode-caches-compared

And to the previous commenter’s assertion that APC based PHP will be twice as fast as Phalanger, the 190% speed improvement in the referenced article seems to support that.

Also, the Phlanger PHPbb test is little off. It was run on a pentium M 1.8Ghz laptop using windows XP. It’s not exactly the environment most people will use when running PHP (which can be seen pretty clearly by the paltry 6 requests per second it pumped out). Also, everything was run on the same box (including the test harness itself).