[fpc-pascal] CGI (with Free Pascal) vs PHP

[Bisma Jayadi]

> If you where planning on writing a new online inventory system with a
> Firebird DB as backend. Yes that is what I'm about to do...  What
> would be the best choice of language?

Of course, Pascal! :)

> For one I don't know PHP, but was told it is really easy to learn. I
> know Object Pascal / Delphi very well.

For pascal developers, PHP is a mess. We use it simply because everybody use it, 
for matter of community support.

> What would be the advantages of one over the other. Currently when I
> write Free Pascal applications I use tiOPF (Object Persistent
> Framework)  to handle all my object persistence. This also allows me
> to switch DB backends without any code changes. I guess using CGI
> with Free Pascal I can still take advantage of that.

There's a pascal based CGI framework used to be called PSP (Pascal Server Page) 
but the authors had change the name to PWU (Pascal Web Utility?). Before I know 
PWU is existed, I use PHP, but now, I choose PWU. If you prefer OOP approach, 
you can use O-PSP (object PSP) another branch of the (default) procedural PSP.

> So 1 point to CGI and 0 to PHP.  :-)

If building CGI with no framework, I prefer using PHP. But since I knew PWU, I 
switch to PWU. Slowly but sure, I'm converting my PHP apps to PWU. Using FPC and 
PWU, there's almost no boundaries to what you can do to a web based app. We can 
use almost any FPC's frameworks/components/libraries on our CGI app. If you want 
to dirt you hand a little more, it'd not too hard to convert your CGI app into 
an Apache module. :)

More about PSP/PWU, visit
http://z505.com/cgi-bin/qkcont/qkcont.cgi?p=Powerful%20Web%20Utilities

-Bee-

has Bee.ography at:
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