Robust and Business-like LAMP
customers) who hire independent developers (you) may need more impressive
examples of what the LAMP solution stack can do besides the WordPress example we
cited last time. After all, blogs are
great for consultants or service businesses that must take on an air of
authority. But surely, even a small
businessman will appreciate what has been done with Wikipedia, arguably the
best-known non-commercial site for some years now. Informing even a medium-size home-furnishing
or imprinted premium e-commerce site operator that the underlying WikiMedia
runs on a Linux platform and that information is served up with a combination
of Apache HTTPD, PHP and MySQL is bound to get their attention. Nor does it hurt that Wikipedia running LAMP
accommodates close to 10% of the world’s surfers every single day. That’s a factoid of the day from Alexa by the
way.
strengthen your arguments to push a LAMP development proposal, be sure to cite
six advantages.
1. First,
isn’t it amazing how widespread the LAMP community is? And how you can get answers when stuck
because others out there have addressed the industry or corporate resource
you’re working on?
2. The
same community cooperates on security issues and volunteers patches in short
order, not like you-know-who that is hard put to resolve a zero-day problem?
3. Your
imaginativeness as a developer rules because there are no technical barriers or
license clauses to hem you in.
4. You
are able to offer shorter turnaround time because coding highly-functional
applications with the LAMP components is normally an efficient exercise.
5. More
features and customization because you can code functionality to suit the
client’s needs or revise modules others have developed through the years.
6. A
wide choice of hosts that accommodate LAMP as a standard. And choice means flexibility on hosting
costs. Failing that, you can deploy with
popular Linux distro’s like Fedora.
dozen values you get from LAMP that I listed the other day.
In the end, cost need not even be
an issue. As the successful LAMP
developers at HyTech Professionals (www.hytechpro.com) demonstrate week after
week, the solution stack is all about letting you roll out supremely capable
and effective Web-facing applications.
Dynamic LAMP
mine at HyTech Professionals (www.hytechpro.com) could only agree
enthusiastically with the even dozen advantages of the LAMP solution stack I
run in the last post. Clearly, cost
savings is not even the major advantage of using the LAMP combo.
you want to do is save time and cobble together a Web application using only
Linux for the platform and Apache for the Web server? Sure, any developer will tell you it’s a
static site. You have to build
information pages and fill them in yourself.
But never mind, the rudimentary e-commerce “solution” seems to work all
right because you’ve gotten hold of a utility or two that lets customers put
stuff in their shopping cart and execute orders. So everything is hunky-dory until your
wonderful line of herbal-source food supplements expands with the fad of the
month year after year. Pretty soon,
adding product pages and processing orders becomes a managerial nightmare. And this site on the cheap does not even
dynamically welcome back a customer and recognize her as a loyal buyer of
slimming products.
about the need for dynamic scripting (PHP, Perl or Python) and a robust MySQL
database, take a gander at just two examples built on LAMP: WordPress and
Wikipedia.
an apparently infinite number of contributions and pulling the information from
the database in whatever sequence the visitor wants. In the case of WordPress, PHP is the
application environment, responsible for taking that data from the MySQL-run
server and displaying it on the unvarying but hugely convenient blogging
template. The relational power of MySQL
is what enables WordPress to display prior posts, offer a list of categories or
just posts for one category the viewer is interested in.
In my next post, we will cover some
more benefits that LAMP brings, specifically for revenue-producing Web sites.
12 Good Points About the LAMP Components
Other than the fact that there is
no dearth of developers who learn enough LAMP to competently put together a Web
application, herewith an even dozen of enduring advantages to the LAMP solution
stack:
1. Installation
is easy because most Linux distro’s bundle all the other LAMP components.
2. Linux
is flexible – A good developer takes advantage of access to the source code to
customize the OS and optimize it as a base for Web applications.
3. Linux
is versatile – The OS is “friendly” with a good range of file servers and
network drivers.
4. Linux
doesn’t mind legacy hardware -- because the open-source community has adapted
it to work from mainframes to servers and desktops. Your ancient Burroughs mini or Sun
workstation is no longer supported OEM-wise?
Linux and the rest of the LAMP bundle will likely work happily in those.
5. The
original Apache project was HTTPD, meaning it was a capable Web-facing platform
right from the start. This is especially
true for fairly uncomplicated file-based serving.
6. The
standard Apache pack has extension modules that can be loaded to service
important tasks like specialized authentication and security environments, data
caching and support for basic site traffic analysis.
7. Apache
speeds up the P languages (Perl, Python, or PHP) by accepting embedded
interpreters and therefore substantially boosting Web application performance.
8. Unlike
Linux, Apache is fairly easy to install and configure.
9. Once
installed, Apache is so stable it needs little “care and feeding.”
10. In turn,
MySQL is a highly functional relational database even in its default install
configuration.
11. Backstopping
relational tables and SQL as it does, MySQL does very well with Web
applications that do not require frequent updates but must respond to a lot of
queries. Now, doesn’t that sound exactly
like a Web store for a small business with a limited product range?
12. This means
MySQL is also a worthwhile candidate for blogs and knowledge bases or other
types of reference sites.
advantages of the LAMP building blocks and why the whole solution stack makes a
lot of sense in the Web applications space.
Solution Stack 101: The Continuing Attraction to LAMP
Solution Stack 101: The Continuing Attraction to LAMP
In our last post, we identified the
starting line-up for LAMP, argued that an open source stack inherently reduces
investment risk for a start-up and well, the obvious benefit that all the
components are dirt-cheap to acquire.
Today, let’s delve into variations and why you still save money whatever
you do.
A decade has passed since a German
developer first espoused LAMP in print. Since
then, our ever-adventurous brethren in the open-source community have espoused
different flavors. The eager young
developers at HyTech Professionals (www.hytechpro.com) up in Nashua (NH) have
succeeded with dozen of contract projects alternately writing the user
interface in Perl, Python or PHP. So
it’s still LAMP anyway. But they are
really, really passionate about the elegance of Ruby on Rails. Now, rather than get hung up with an acronym
like LAMR (just how courageously can you stand on a “lamer” approach and still
expect to get paid megabucks?), a wise man settled the issue by ruling that P
should mean “programming language”. So
that covers PHP, Perl, Python, and Ruby really neatly.
Other folks swear by PostgreSQL and
rely on mod python or mod perl to do the front end. Happily, we still have a genie’s LAMP with
the last two functions switched. In a
proprietary environment, Windows instead of Linux and IIS in place of Apache
does not make for a nice acronym at all.
LAMP and every other open-source stack is that all the components are readily
available, bundled with any Linux distro you care to name. Hence, there is no lack of developers who get
trained on open-source OS, scripting languages and Web servers. This is a great benefit for small and medium
businesses that would like to launch their first Web application or expand what
they have to make enterprise collaboration and Internet marketing a reality.
Solution Stack 101: Why Cost-less LAMP Works
Solution Stack 101: Why Cost-less LAMP Works
As promised, we switch today to the
open-source solution stack LAMP. What
the Windows Server-Internet Information Services-Microsoft SQL Server-ASP.NET
stack is for the Windows environment, the open-source equivalent to cobble
together a Web application is LAMP. For
the benefit of newbie’s, LAMP stands for:
1. Linux
(the operating system);
2. Apache
(the Web server);
3. MySQL,
(the database management system)
4. Perl,
PHP, and/or Python (scripting languages).
While tapping out this post on my
trusty Blackberry Curve, the RoR evangelists at HyTech Professionals
(www.hytechpro.com) did their level best to convince me to get with the times,
ditch LAMP and embrace LAM-R (or LARM, if you will). Maybe they have a point about that Ruby on
Rails as an efficient scripting tool.
To get back on track, however, why
would any “bleeding-edge” IT manager or developer stake their business’
computing future on an open-source stack made of distro’s for which upgrades or
new features come sporadically? Well,
the primary advantage of LAMP really is very low cost of acquisition, even
after ISV’s and integrators market enhanced versions. Affordability is vital for at least two
reasons:
1. In
the aftermath of the dot-com collapse, the technology startup or budding
e-commerce venture that had the backing of angel investors was very rare
indeed. Many would never have made it as
far as they did if they had invested six figures right away in licensed
platforms.
2. LAMP
is a fantastic risk reduction option when you consider the Gartner report that
nearly two-thirds of application development projects fail. Many a canny CIO has learned to buck the odds
by prototyping or doing proof-of-concept in LAMP so that the cost of acquiring
the latest components for a Windows stack does not come back to haunt him and
cause many a sleepless night.
In my next post, we will take a
look at more scenarios where budget-friendly LAMP stacks pay off, at least in
the medium term.
