WHAT IS PHP

                                              PHP is a server-side scripting language. A server-side scripting language is one, which has the capability of executing the script on the server and serving the output as an HTML file. Server-side scripts have the main advantage of interacting with databases, as well as performing all types of server manipulations directly. Server-side scripting languages can manipulate the data which is received from web forms, anywhere on the Net.

                      But this is not the case with client-side scripts such as JavaScript and VBScript. However, there are exceptions where, client-side scripts can also be used for server-side scripting, but this is limited to some extent.

                     PHP is a cross-platform support language, which means, PHP can run on various platforms such as Linux, Windows etc. Web servers such as PWS, IIS and Apache can be configured to work with PHP.

                    PHP is very much compatible with MYSQL and POSTGRESQL Databases. PHP also can be programmed to interact with any database right from a simple text file to DB2. It is believed that PHP's ability to interact with databases is greater than any other scripting languages               
                
PHP has many advantages over other scripting languages. Some of the important highlights are as follows:

         Speed - PHP is considered to be the fastest of the scripting languages. You can really feel the speed when you implement scripts live on the web. Normally when you try to connect a database and fetch certain data, it takes time to connect the database, execute the statement and get the data across.
Because of its high performance in terms of speed, PHP is being used for some of the important Web server administration such as mail functionality.
        Open Source - PHP is open source. This means users are given a free license to remodel or recode PHP, according to their wishes. You might wonder how this is possible without source code but source code is shipped with PHP - it is open source.
        Multi Platform - PHP supports various Plat forms, which means PHP can be installed on almost all operating systems such as Windows-x and Linux, just choose the appropriate version to download and follow the instructions given in the Manual accordingly.
        Easy Syntax - PHP syntax is quite easy to code. It is similar to that of the C language. If you are new to the programming environment however, getting used to the syntax may be a bit difficult.