Topic: Q&A 2010: Post your questions to the MSFT open source team

[subtalk]

Microsoft Q&A: February 22, 2010

PHP Freaks community has been approached by Microsoft to follow up on last year’s Q&A and continue with the discussion between Microsoft and open source/PHP community. 

Over the last year Microsoft has been actively engaged to enhance running PHP on Windows Server 2008. The improvements include:

• SQL Server driver for PHP
• Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP
• Integration into open source Content Management System (CMS) with platforms such as Wordpress and Drupal

There is a good deal of work being done on making PHP run on Azure as well.

Now they would like to get our thoughts on your experience with running PHP on Windows Server and how you see these improvements impact your development work.

On February 22^nd at 4.30 GMT, Tom Hanrahan, Director of Microsoft’s Open Source Technology Center will be joining us on the forum to answer your questions, he will also be available for a few hours for follow up queries and open discussion.

Tom has previously worked for IBM, the Linux Foundation and OSDL, and calls his team's interoperability work "the single most important movement we're seeing in the industry now." More on Tom in his introductory thread.

Please post your questions and any comments on PHP and Microsoft for Tom below. Tom will try to answer them on the day of the Q&A within this forum group.

[Mchl]

Hello

I've been tasked with managing a Windows 2008 Foundation server recently (and that's my first contact with Windows Servers). I need to run SharePoint on it, as well as custom application created on PHP/Apache/MySQL. The client will not move to MSSQL, so let's leave this issue aside

Right now I'm running IIS on default settings and Apache on port 8080. I'd prefer to run just one web server, but I have close to none knowledge about IIS. How easy do you think it would be to port the custom application from Apache to IIS? Are there any common pitfalls to avoid?

I guess one of common complaints about IIS is lack of mod_rewrite equivalent... is there some way to implement this feature in IIS?

[steviewdr]

Note: its been a while since I had to tackle php and iis, and some of my points may not be relevant any more.

Can php options (php.ini) be set for a particular folder? Similar to setting php values via .htaccess on apache.
Can Virtual Sites have different php.ini configs?
Having the ability to have .htaccess files provides great flexibility. Is there anything similar in IIS?
Does the php's mail() work out of the box on Windows and IIS (Note: I know it would be the same for apache and php on windows).
How are permissions handled for file uploads for example? Is there a similar option to suphp for IIS? Or can IIS tell php to run as a particular user for a Virtual Site?

Apologies I have not had the time to research the above questions. I know they are some of the ones that made be move away from using iis and php on windows.

Adding in IIS (well here on my Windows Vista) took a good few minutes, although thankfully didn't require any additional downloads.
Is IIS available on all levels of XP,Vista,Windows7?
If I develop php code and someone wants to test or get a very basic php website up and running, they shouldn't need Server 2008, or Vista/7 Ultimate. So the question is, will iis and php run on windows home?

What php extensions get enabled when installed via IIS? E.g. GD Extension, MySQL, SqLite etc? How easy is it to add in these extensions?
If I install MySQL will it work straight away with IIS and PHP?
Can multiple versions of php be run together? I.E. 1 virtual site uses php4 and a second virtual site uses php5?

Apologies I have not had the time to research or structure all of my points. These are some of the questions that come to mind at the moment.

Rgds,
Steve

[SemiApocalyptic]

Disclaimer: I have not had the time to research any of the following points, comments or questions. They are based on my previous experience with Windows which was appox. 4 years ago, and I have never actively used IIS in either a development or production environment.

Native Rewriting Engine
Obviously a common point is the apparent lack of a native URL rewriting engine for IIS. As far as I'm aware the only way of achieving a similar functionality set to that of Apache httpd mod_rewrite is via the purchase and installation of a third party ISAPI plug-in. Has there been any development with regards to native support for such functionality?

Configuration
From what I understand, configuring IIS is a case of navigating throughout a graphical configuration utility - Is there a text based alternative to this? Many users (especially those accustomed to GNU/Linux) find it a lot more efficient working with text based config files.

Performance
It has been mentioned that Microsoft have been working on making PHP run faster on the Windows platform, but how does this compare with a LAMP stack on identical hardware? There is the obvious consumption of resources by things such as the requirement of the GUI to be running on Windows, but do these things actively affect the performance of the server?

Internet Explorer VHDs
With regards to developing on platforms other than Windows, it is not always straight forward testing on Internet Explorer 6/7/8. I am aware than Microsoft have released some time-restricted VHDs specifically for running environments for these versions of IE, but unfortunately it would appear that they do not run correctly on operating systems other than Windows. Do Microsoft have any plans to release VHDs that are compatible with something like Suns VirtualBox running under GNU/Linux?

Silverlight / Moonlight
How much involvement does Microsoft have with the development of the Moonlight, the GNU/Linux interpretation of Microsofts Silverlight? From what I understand this is a Novel initiative, but it's far from perfect - I have yet to successfully get it installed onto my machine. Is Microsoft actively assisting this development, or is it more of a "we promise not to sue you for trying to get it working" situation?

Integration with Open Source CMS
You touched on this point in the introduction post of this thread. I was wondering if you could expand on this a bit further? On the surface, these are some open source CMS systems written in PHP - How are you specifically 'integrating' with them, and do/can these methods be integrated with any application written in PHP?

Evaluation
In all honesty, it's unlikely that I'd be making the switch from LAMP to WIMP (heh) due to a number of reasons - But out of interest, do you offer any evaluation copies of the required technologies (that would also run comfortably under a VM)? I noticed there is a trial of Server 2006 available on the MS website, but it appears there is only an x64 version available - Not all 64-bit chips support 64-bit virtualisation, and not everyone has a 64-bit chip in a test box to run it on!

[Daniel0]

I realize some of these questions might overstep the boundary of "Microsoft and Open Source", so feel free to ignore me if that's the case


First the obvious question: What does Microsoft hope to achieve in the long term by collaborating with the open source community?

Does Microsoft see the open source community and competing open source projects as a real threat to their business? For instance, on the browser market, Firefox has got a pretty significant share and Google Chrome is rapidly gaining foothold as well. If you perceive them as a threat, what does Microsoft intend to do about it? Gradually join the open source movement or conquer them?

The desktop part of the Windows platform seems geared towards mainstream and business usage. In my opinion, a lot of development tasks are easier to do on a Linux platform. Take for instance building PHP from source. Why do I need to download all these huge packages? On Ubuntu/Debian I can just install the build-essential package and I'm ready, on Gentoo they are available from the start. The powerful command line tools on Linux also makes it much nicer to work with. Why must it be so difficult building things from source on Windows?

As a non-enterprise user, why would I choose a Windows web stack? Windows Server requires a GUI to even run and as SemiApocalyptic said, configuration is done through a myriad of dialog windows. Plus it costs money. A basic VPS with a Linux distro runs on very few resources and I can do literally anything I would ever need to do from the command line. Why is there not a free non-commercial, non-GUI version of Windows Server? Surely you don't expect people to purchase a Windows Server license to host their small projects?

This one is very much related to my first question. Why does Microsoft want to help projects like PHP? Surely you would rather have people using some sort of .NET technology like C# instead?

How does Microsoft look at their employees using open source technologies (both at work and at home) rather than their own proprietary products? For instance Windows vs. Linux, Firefox/Chrome vs. Internet Explorer, MS Office vs. Open Office, Eclipse/NetBeans/vim vs. Visual Studio, Android vs. Windows Mobile, etc. Are you "forced" to use Microsoft's products as a Microsoft employee?

Why does Microsoft keep developing their own proprietary rendering engine (Trident)? I don't think even Microsoft would say that it's superior to competing rendering engines like Gecko (Mozilla), WebKit (Safari/Chrome) or Presto (Opera). While Microsoft works to catch up with the others, the others have had time improve. Internet Explorer does still not support XHTML for instance (by using the application/xhtml+xml content-type). Besides the rendering engine, I don't really see anything wrong with Internet Explorer, so why not choose an open source rendering engine like WebKit, or does Microsoft not want to collaborate with Google and Apple?

In some circles there is a very bad view on Microsoft. They are seen as bad guys that you need to avoid, and some places you'll hear things like "you're a noob if you're using Windows." I once had a professor (I'm studying computer science) say something like "[...] of course computers keep getting faster, so that means we can do a lot of things faster. Of course if you're using that Windows thing you'll can get bogged down with a lot of useless bling bling and not see any improvement." How does Microsoft plan on overcoming these views, or is it even a concern at all seeing as it's far from a majority view?

[GingerRobot]

Further to a question which was posed during last year's Q&A, one of the things that was mentioned in Microsoft's Open Source Mission Statement (re-attached below) was support for reading and writing of Word and Excel documents....I was basically wondering:

Has any progress been made on this?
What are the (likely) dependencies for this? Would it require an IIS server? A windows system with MS Office installed? Could it be run under Linux?

Questions about writing Office documents pop up on the forum with reasonable frequency and while there are one or two third party libraries around, it would seem that something written by the same people who produce Office is likely to be far better.

Off Topic:

" I once had a professor (I'm studying computer science) say something like "[...] of course computers keep getting faster, so that means we can do a lot of things faster. Of course if you're using that Windows thing you'll can get bogged down with a lot of useless bling bling and not see any improvement."

Sounds pretty much like "May's Law" (he's a professor at my Uni) : "Software efficiency halves every 18 months, compensating Moore's Law" :p

[Mchl]

Oh yes. I'll subscribe to this question too. When working with large Excel spreadsheets using COM extension is probably the only way to be able to do it without access to infinite RAM. And I don't really want to install MS Office on a webserver/fileserver...

[SemiApocalyptic]

Last year your targets included support for PHP 5.3 compatibility and UTF-8 Unicode support with regards to your SQL Server driver - Has this been introduced yet, and are there any plans for development of a Linux compatible driver for accessing remote MSSQL servers?

[TomHanrahan]

I realize some of these questions might overstep the boundary of "Microsoft and Open Source", so feel free to ignore me if that's the case

In some circles there is a very bad view on Microsoft. They are seen as bad guys that you need to avoid, and some places you'll hear things like "you're a noob if you're using Windows." I once had a professor (I'm studying computer science) say something like "[...] of course computers keep getting faster, so that means we can do a lot of things faster. Of course if you're using that Windows thing you'll can get bogged down with a lot of useless bling bling and not see any improvement." How does Microsoft plan on overcoming these views, or is it even a concern at all seeing as it's far from a majority view?

Part of the answer to this question is that one person’s “bling bling” is another person’s “ease-of-use.”  As Daniel points out, the negative-side of the view is a minority one.  Many people look to Windows for the great computing experience the platform provides them.  But it’s also prudent for Microsoft to take a close look at criticism directed to the Windows platform, particularly when it comes from sources with deep technical knowledge like academia (i.e, Daniel’s professor) and members of the open source community.
 
Users and developers with deep technical knowledge tend to want to interact more directly with the underlying computing power of the platform than those who choose the platform because it provides them with the programs they want to run and the convenience and efficiencies they want in managing those programs.  Those who want more direct access to the platform generally have the knowledge and skill to do so and are willing to take on the management responsibilities that the “ease-of-use” features handle for others.   I think the work that we’re doing to enable open source to be built, deployed and run on Windows addresses the heart of this issue.   If a user wants more direct access and a set of open source packages provides that access, then we need to make sure that set of packages runs on Windows.   This approach lets the technical user interact with the platform the way he or she wants to or needs to but still provides the computing experience the more general-purpose user looks for.

[TomHanrahan]

As a non-enterprise user, why would I choose a Windows web stack? Windows Server requires a GUI to even run and as SemiApocalyptic said, configuration is done through a myriad of dialog windows. Plus it costs money. A basic VPS with a Linux distro runs on very few resources and I can do literally anything I would ever need to do from the command line. Why is there not a free non-commercial, non-GUI version of Windows Server? Surely you don't expect people to purchase a Windows Server license to host their small projects?

The goal of the work we’re doing in the Open Source Technology Center at Microsoft is to eliminate the need for any user to have to make an either/or decision.  Why do you have to decide between a Windows web stack and say a Linux web stack?  If we make the open source components of the web stack run on Windows, then the user can ask, what are the parts of the Windows web stack I like?  What are the parts of the open source web stack I like?  And combination of components gives me the best performance, functionality and experience?  Of course, a user can still make an either/or decision, that’s fine.   But the user doesn’t HAVE to make that decision anymore.  You get more flexibility and choices in deciding what works for you.