In 2002, my company met an unexpected crossroad that led us down a very ambitious path. Our mission was to create a new middleware platform that also included a complete development and framework environment. And all of it had to operate within a browser.
We had already built a middleware environment in ASP. However, high-volume traffic was met with unacceptable instability. Faced with issues associated with instability and OS limitations, we made the decision to re-engineer the environment, which included the challenges of the framework environment and system functionality - features typically reserved for mainframe solutions.
The PHP ExperimentWe had to decide upon a development language, but we thought at the time that our choice was limited to Java. Soon it was apparent that Java posed many issues for a project such as ours. Most glaring was Java's slow execution. Additionally, using Java would require twice the development staff and considerably extend the project's development cycle. Despite negative rumors about PHP's ability to facilitate the needs of a project of this capacity, the team leader of the Linux Integration Specialist group, Bill Cavalieri, suggested we examine PHP.
With PHP at the forefront of our testing, we immediately set out to develop a new user interface component to test PHP's prowess. (Part of what's now known as Lumenation's Virtual Desktop - a functional desktop users utilize when interfacing with the system). In a mere week, our staff had created a working model of our new, browser-accessible "virtual desktop." Even though there was still much development to be done on the virtual desktop, we were very encouraged by PHP's flexibility and speed; both in performance and development cycle.
With the apparent success of our initial tests, we began to test against significantly higher-volume traffic. We incorporated our Gentoo Linux distribution system and Apache as our system software choices. Again the results were impressive. So much so that we proceeded to test on all different network access speeds (including 28.8) with excellent results on all. In a very short amount of time, PHP became the clear choice.
Tables 1 and 2 show some of the circumstances we experienced that led us to our selection of PHP, Linux, and Apache as our preferred configuration.
The Development FeaturesWe hit few, if any "show-stoppers." When we did run into an obstacle, we were always able to come up with immediate solutions to solve the problem quickly. This was much different than what we had experienced with previous development tools and environments. The built-in components embedded within PHP are extensive, and provide solutions, or building blocks, to solve the obstacles one might encounter.
For example, PHP has built-in e-mail send/receive components, multiple database connectivity, image processing, and many other innate solutions. Additionally, PHP features many libraries developed by open source developers that can provide an organization with ready-made solutions to meet their needs. I asked our project team leader, Vitali Malinouski, his perspective on the most valuable asset that PHP provided his team during development. The answer was simply, "Its completeness."
It was important to us, and to our solutions, to avoid the use of outside components. With PHP, we were able to develop all of our systems and modules without the use of outside components, with one exception: A component named ADODB. In all, except for ADODB, we encountered obstacles in providing solutions for a WYSIWYG forms processor, dashboard capability, user session control, and many other development issues, all of which our staff was able to readily solve. That fact alone has given us a significant degree of respect for and confidence in PHP.
Scalability and execution speeds are often the factors by which a system is measured. Using PHP, we built Lumenation to meet the needs ranging from the very small, to extremely large user bases, providing a more feature-rich and functional environment than exists within any solution currently on the market.
To testify to this fact, Lumenation middleware "hosts" our Special Education Management System (called WeBSET), supporting over 100,000 students from 80+ school districts, throughout 5 states. (Typically running 60-70 concurrent users at any given time.) During peak times, this can spike to over 100 users, with each user generating at least one 10-12 page document consisting of information selected from 56 separate tables. The efficiencies of our PHP based system allow us to handle these "mega users" with excellent performance, and on a server running a single Xeon (2.4 Ghz) with 2 GB RAM. We also have other Lumenation modules, such as: Enterprise Calendar, Help Desk System, etc., that we consider to support more of your "typical user." The scalability of these types of users is much greater, as much as three times.
To increase the performance of the server to handle larger number of users, there are many options available.
- Adding additional processors or faster processors
- In some cases more RAM
- Separating the systems into application servers that utilize a separate DB server.
- Also Zend has created an optimization solution for PHP to give it a tremendous boost in performance as well.
There are other methods, but the above identifies the simplest methods of increasing number of "concurrent users."
The ResultsOur team has come to refer to PHP's rock solid configuration as the "Maytag" effect. We actually distribute our pre-bundled solutions to users who simply want to plug-in the server to their network and start using the system.
Thus far we have developed not only a host of Lumenation modules (applications/systems of which some of their features are listed below), but an entire enterprise middleware/framework environment with PHP at its core, producing a very sophisticated and flexible solution as Lumenation. PHP has allowed us to meet not only the varied needs of our customers, but also deliver our solutions in a fraction of the time than we could have achieved with any other development suite or framework available today.
At the risk of sounding like a marketing wonk, following is a list of the features we developed using PHP. The purpose of including this information is not to "toot our own horn," but to share with you a sense of the scope of what was entailed in the development of these solutions. From this you will probably feel as we did originally, that the myth about the limitations of PHP were not started by PHP developers.
Lumenation features (all aspects operate through a browser):
- Virtual Desktop
- User Management (Full access journaling)
- User Applications Access Management (Full access journaling)
- User Data Access Management (Full access journaling)
- HIPAA Compliant environment
- Controlled Session Time-to-Live/Auto User System Logout
- Multi-User Controlled Record Access (record locking) and Journaling
- Help context and management system
- System Data Dictionary
- DB, Table, Field definition
- Import/Export functionality
- Application Module Interface
- User application multi-tasking within virtual desktop
- System/module update support
- Third party module support. Includes distribution, installation, and updates.
LightBulb - Lumenation Development Environment:
- WYSIWYG PHP Code Editor
- Context highlighting
- Integrated Context Help (object processing)
- Integrated SQL Builder
- Integrated Application Builder
- Report Builder Module- WYSIWYG Ad hoc Report Building System
- Page Builder - WYSIWYG HTML Authoring with source integration.
- Source Management System
This list represents but a small insight to the functionalities of the products and tools we've developed using PHP and JavaScript. No small feat by any measure.
PHP SupportSupport for PHP has been terrific.
The PHP community and the many PHP reference guides were all we needed to begin developing our solution. Our staff rarely needs assistance now, but when they do, they readily find resources to help them. We have found the responsiveness of the community far better than any vendor provided solution we utilized in the past.
Developers EnvironmentWe are often asked, "What do our developers use themselves; what's their desktop and tools?" The "tools" our developers use are now, since it's completion, exclusively our own LightBulb development suite. The majority of our developers' desktops utilize our EzThin Solution, which is our configuration and admini-strative tool-set utilizing Gentoo, KDE, and LTSP. Since LightBulb and Lumena-tion are completely browser based, all our developers need is Internet access and a browser! As for our entire organization, we utilize our EzThin server solution as well (Gentoo, KDE, LTSP), open source applications (OpenOffice, Mozilla,..), and Lumenation for all internal "business" applications (Gentoo, Apache, PostgreSQL, ionCube).
ConclusionIt was just a year ago, the end of March 2003, and the conclusion of development on Lumenation version 3.0, that the enormity of our team's accomplishment finally hit home. It was the first time we had allowed ourselves to look back at where we had been, struggling with incomplete, slow development tools, to where we now stood...and all in the span of less than a year. No skeptics exist at Lumen Software of PHP's abilities.
PHP is an extremely flexible and complete development language. It provides scalability and execution speeds we have not been able to achieve with any other solution. This fact has been documented by third party verifications as well, with Lumenation being described as having less latency than "most desktop operating systems over the Internet."
Looking back, we kick ourselves for having fallen into the tech "rumor mill" that PHP could not handle applications of significant size or complexity. That is simply not the case. Our results are truly a testament to this.
PHP, we just want to say, "Thank you"!
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