Here at DMXzone we like our authors to share their knowledge with you – sure, mostly it's in depth technical stuff through the tutorials, but just occasionally it's refreshing to take a step back and get some perspective on the type of circumstances they work under. See how our code gurus earn their daily bread and what they worry about in their local market.

 

Today we've got our tattooed, South African residing, PHP hero Allan Kent sharing his opinions on giving the client value for money, getting ahead of the curve, and winding editors up!

View from the Trenches – Allan Kent

Here at DMXzone we like our authors to share their knowledge with you – sure, mostly it's in depth technical stuff through the tutorials, but just occasionally it's refreshing to take a step back and get some perspective on the type of circumstances they work under. See how our code gurus earn their daily bread and what they worry about in their local market.

Today we've got our tattooed, South African residing, PHP hero Allan Kent sharing his opinions on giving the client value for money, getting ahead of the curve, and winding editors up!

DMX: Allan, let's start at the beginning. How did you get into PHP in the first place and how are you using it professionally?

AK: Well sometime ago I was involved in an IT company (selling PC's and the like) and we had an Intranet written in ASP talking to a small Sybase database. Anyhow I found out about this PHP technology and reckoned it looked good. So I got stuck in and rewrote the system in PHP3 with a MySQL database running on FreeBSD; I was staggered to find out how much faster it was!

Now when we're dealing with clients it's a cost issue.

Let's say you've got an intranet type application – the client is going to need a database and you'll want to give them something a bit meatier than Access. OK so you do have Microsoft SQL Server, but, particularly in our markets, budget is an issue and telling a client they'll need a SQL Server installation for thousands of Rand is a bit of a meeting killer.

But go in with an Open Source/BSD style license, your client is in for, at the most, the setup costs of a guy to come in and competently install FreeBSD/Apache/PHP/PostgreSQL. We used to suggest MySQL but their licensing has changed recently.

Of course that's why I'm now doing a series looking at Firebird! At the end of the day if we can find solutions that reduce the bottom line, those solutions are going to appeal to the client. For a smaller client who wants a nice database type intranet application – be it anything as small as a timesheet program or a client telephone database, to a fully fledged application to run their business – you can stick Linux PHP and a database on a cheap desktop and you're in business. As long as you have a decent backup of the data you don't need a huge server with raid and gigs of ram.

So yeah we'll write in ASP if that's what a client wants, but are more likely to push PHP ourselves.