Microsoft continued their support of PHP by releasing a Community Technology Preview for the SQL Server Driver for PHP 2.0. With this release PHP developer can use PHP Data Objects with the SQL Server driver! This will serve to reduce the complexity of targeting multiple databases on the back end. As I’ve noticed before, Business Intelligence and reports will be easier to implement with PHP.
This new driver also supports new Azure features, like OData feeds. I’ll post more on OData, and how I think this shows Microsoft is becoming less concerned over doing things “their way” and more about working collaboratively with the greater development community.
This is definitely a step in the right direction for developing a WISP (Windows, IIS, SQL Server, and PHP) stack. While the licensing costs would still be higher with WISP when compared to LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP), familiarity with the Microsoft world can extend into web development, particularly for newer developers.
Couple this news with Microsoft’s Campaign Ready online resources — tools for politicians and political action groups, and you may begin to think Microsoft is having some small change in their business methods. I’m hoping this changes are only and indication of this change, and not the total sum of the changes!
I’d like to hear what you think. Are you a LAMP developer? Are you a WIS.N developer? Would you be willing to try the other side? Does this new driver entice you in any way to experiment in PHP? Send in your comments!