[AccessD] Learning .Net -- PHP Instead?

If you are interested in Web programming, I would suggest PHP. Per unit of
effort, I think most VBA programmers would get further with PHP than with
ASPX, especially if you are starting out from scratch.

I'm developing a SOAP-based web service that will be used by Access clients
running the COM-based SOAP Library 3.0. The server backend is being written
in PHP, currently running under a local IIS7 development server. It is
stupid-simple to implement a SOAP server using PHP's built-in library. It
was lots harder getting the VBA side to work than the PHP side. (The real
challenge was getting a WSDL specification that both sides could agree on,
but that is a separate topic.)

PHP Plusses:

* Of all open-source languages, PHP is the closest to VBA in it's feel and
philosophy -- a pragmatic language that lets you get results fast
* PHP 5.2+ works very well with Windows -- it installs with little fuss
under IIS7, and has native drivers for SQL Server
* The upcoming release, 5.3, offers some very nice language enhancements,
like namespaces, late static binding, and closures. It even adds goto! These
features bring it up to rough parity with scripting languages like Python or
Ruby, and make it a much more expressive language than VBA.
* There is an enormous ecosystem of open-source libraries, IDEs, CMS sytems,
and MVC frameworks to choose from.
* Projects developed under Windows/IIS should work with little or no changes
under Linux/Apache.

PHP Drawbacks:

* PHP is a web-specific language. If you want something general-purpose, use
something else.
* PHP's libraries are extensive and rapidly improving, but it doesn't have
the monolithic library integration that .NET enjoys with the CLR.
* Comprehensive, transparent support for Unicode is still lacking, as it is
with most scripting languages. PHP 6 will rectify this.

-Ken


>    The only problem with .Net is that a large bunch of guys/girls on this
list
>    are old farts and after spending 20 odd years mastering MS Access, are
slow
>    to learn new tricks.
>    ...
>    Jim