PHP

PHP an interpreted language, which is quite popular for web applications.

It's basically a procedural language. One of the tripple P (Php, Perl, Python) choice of the lamp basic web service setup. To give php users a feeling, here a side by side comparison of the php and Askemos way. We select from a data base table and format as an html description list:

<?
$link=mysql_connect("localhost",
                    "user", "pass");
$query = "use test";
if(!mysql_query($query, $link") {
    die("no data base");
}
?>

<dl>
<?
$query = "select Topic, Description from db";
$result = mysql_query($query, $link);
while($row=mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
  echo "\n<dt>".$row["Topic"]."</dt><dd>".
       $row["Description"]."</dd>");
}
mysql_free_result($result);
?>
</dl>

<xsql:query connection="demo"
     row-element="" rowset-element="dl">
select Topic dt, Description, dd from db
</xsql:query>

No matter why one might choose PHP as a web script language -- but as a computer language it's a rather poor design, really. One word of warning: some of it's flaws let it appear to be it a rather poor choice security wise.

See also selforum (german).

Note: There is a phptools kit under development, which will eventually allow to convert PHP to Scheme (and with a little help of a to be developed rewritng engine equivalent DSSSL code).