Introduction

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Introduction PHP is a word not commonly used in sentences that also have the word Windows. PHP is a very popular open-source programming language for the web. It is used with other open-source software, such as the Linux OS and the Apache web server (plus, it runs extremely well on these platforms). But Windows itself is often left out. You don't often find books or web sites that focus on Windows PHP development. Rather, the focus is largely on developing on Linux platforms. Why should that be so? PHP is as capable of running both on a Windows desktop and in a Windows enterprise as any commonly used language, such as ASP and ColdFusion, to mention a couple. In addition, PHP can cope with all the features a Windows web developer needs, such as COM, LDAP, ODBC, and ADO. You can successfully create solutions with other open-source technologies (the MySQL database, for example) that run on both platforms. However, sometimes a developer focuses on one platform and needs to take advantage of what that platform offers. This book addresses these issues and shows you how to go about using PHP to take advantage of the Windows platform.

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