I have been following this discussion with interest. It is my opinion that
the combination of business and presentation logic, particularily through 
the use of embedded scripting, is a truly hideous method of developing 
anything but the most trivial of web applications. "An unmaintainable 
mess" is the way that I would descibe most of the code that I have seen 
written in this way.

I am constantly amazed by the lack of discussion regarding template systems
in the many articles about PHP that are now appearing in magazines and on 
sites across the Web. A template based approach provides a complete 
separation of presentation and business logic and allows designers and 
developers to work completely separately if necessary. Once you have 
experienced the power of template based development (such as being able to 
change the complete look and feel of a site without altering any 
PHP/Java/Perl etc) you will probably look upon the embedded approach with 
disdain.

Our entire site at http://www.quote-wizard.net (currently > 40,000 lines of
PHP code)was developed using the template facilities of PHPLib with 
separate teams of developers and designers.

I accept your points regarding database abstraction but as Chris Scollo
points out, it is very easy to achieve with PHP and we have chosen to 
develop our own abstraction classes.

Our only misgivings with regard to our longer-term use of PHP, relate to
scalabilty and weak OOP capabilities. Java servlets/JSP definitely have 
the edge in these areas at present.

David Marley


> I read all the responses to this and, I'll say, they are all inaccurate.
> 
> It is not an MS bandwagon issue.  It is the issue that PHP is NOT good 
for
> developing large sites.
> 
> The reasons?
> 
> 1) ASP and JSP have the ability to let you build business logic in 
separate
> code outside of the webpage script (COM (DLL basically) for ASP and
> JavaBeans for Java).  Talk to any dedicated programmer (web application 
or
> desktop) and they will tell you it makes a big difference.
> 
> 2)  Development tools.  Most programmers do NOT like to sit in front of a
> text editor trying to build thousands of lines of code and trying to 
debug
> it that way also.  ASP and JSP have IDEs that allow you to effectively 
deug
> your code as well as additional tools to help make applications.
> 
> 3)  Database abstraction layers.  My personal opinion is that PHPs use of
> specific database APIs that are different for each data source you 
interface
> with is a horrible approach.  With the other two technologies, no matter
> what database you interact with, the code is basically the same.
> 
> These are the major reasons, as I see it, that PHP is not used in high 
end
> applications, commerce oriented or not.
> 
> 
> Adam Lang
> Systems Engineer
> Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company
> http://www.rutgersinsurance.com
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "yuenkit" <laiyuenkit@y...>
> To: "professional php" <pro_php@p...>
> Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2001 9:30 AM
> Subject: [pro_php] why commerce site seldom use php?
> 
> 
> > i 've observed commercial site seldom use php, instead, they use asp n
> jsp.
> > why?
> >