Whats the difference between php/mysql and asp from what I can see they both do the same thing?

Question

Is there a lot of difference in how you programme with them and the software you use?

Answer 1

They both can handle the same tasks. The choice is often because of what you have to host it on and what experience you have. With asp (.NET), there are free developer tools on microsoft's site. There are plenty of examples and tools for php/mysql. MySQL can also be used in asp

Answer 2

There is quite a long article that shows the major differences between Php and ASP.  Go to www.web2coders.com and read the article "asp v php" (top center).  It is educative!

Answer 3

Yes they both do the same thing -- web-content-generation-on-the-fly.

The difference is the platform in which they run and interact:

ASP is available only on Microsoft Windows servers. And it is almost always used with proprietary Microsoft databases: MS Access or SQL Server (and with Oracle in rare scenarios). ASP can interact with COM applications which are again Microsoft specific. ASP can only be run on IIS web server (may be on Linux with Chili ASP but again, this is a rare case).

PHP is versatile by nature. It is open source (i.e. free) and runs on most platforms -- open-source or proprietary. It can run on Windows with IIS or Apache-win webserver or you can run it on linux with Apache and other webservers. In most cases php is used in tandem with mysql database, which is also open source and available for Windows and Linux. And php's versatility also depends on the fact that there are thousands of developers that make open source libraries for php. So whether you want to generate PDFs on the fly or resize images as they are uploaded, you can always find free libraries for php.

Your decision should base on which languages you are familiar with. If you know a little bit of VB and SQL server and can afford the development tools, you should choose ASP. It is also relatively easy. go for PHP otherwise.

Answer 4

They do the same thing, but the language is different.  ASP is based on Microsofts VisualBasic.

PHP is open source, while ASP is propritery and owned by Microsoft.  ASP is found on webservers running under Windows (WindowsNT Server), while PHP runs under Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and other Unix-systems -- typically any machine running the Apache webserver.

MySQL is an open source database-server, that is typically used for Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and other Unix-system.  Microsoft makes their own database-server for Windows, so this is typically used on Windows-computers together with ASP.  However, as the language PHP and ASP "talks" to the database is the same (SQL), it would be possible to (say) make an ASP-script retrive data from an MySQL database (if you buildt MySQL to run on Windows).

Answer 5

They both do the same thing, but programming them is different (from what I've seen anyway)

PHP & MySQL are both free downloads so it's easy to test your code...

Not sure about ASP though

Also, PHP can be run on Windows but most people use it on Linux - but as ASP is Microsoft, it is naturally optimized for Windows servers

Answer 6

There is only one difference. Php/Mysql is free