Questions for Empirical Evaluation of Server Side Languages

8/6/2019 Questions for Empirical Evaluation of Server Side Languages

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Comparing Server-Side Languages Empirical Comparisons

Comparing Server-Side Web Languages

Server-Side Web Languages

Uta PrissSchool of Computing

Napier University, Edinburgh, UK

Copyright Napier University Comparing Languages Slide 1/13


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Outline

Comparing Server-Side Languages

Empirical Comparisons



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Which Server-Side Web Language is best?

What about ... Php -



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What about ... Php - Probably currently most popular! But not a general

purpose language.

Perl -



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purpose language.

Perl - Older than Php. More difficult to use, but general

purpose. Good for general Unix system admin tasks.



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purpose language.


purpose. Good for general Unix system admin tasks. ASP.NET -


C i S Sid L E i i l C i


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purpose language.


purpose. Good for general Unix system admin tasks. ASP.NET - Microsofts server-side language; commercial;

platform dependent.


C i S Sid L E i i l C i


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purpose language.



platform dependent.

Python -


Comparing Server Side Languages Empirical Comparisons


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purpose language.



platform dependent.

Python - Object oriented multi-purpose scripting language.Really good for server-side tasks! But not that well known.



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purpose language.



platform dependent.


Java Servlets - Java server-side programming, requires ApacheTomcat engine or similar.




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purpose language.



platform dependent.



JSP -




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p g g g p p



purpose language.



platform dependent.



JSP - Suns version of Java server-side programming.




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p g g g p p

Differences among Server-Side Languages

Embedding: is HTML embedded into the code (using printstatements) or is the code embedded into HTML (usingtemplates)?




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Flexibility: are there many ways to achieve a solution?




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Usability: how difficult is it to learn and to use the language?




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Usability: how difficult is it to learn and to use the language? Security: is security built into the language or do

programmers have to write code to ensure security? Are theresecurity holes in the language?




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Speed of execution: how fast is a script executed?




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Generality: is the language special purpose or generalpurpose?




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Generality: is the language special purpose or generalpurpose?

How do Perl and Php compare with respect to these categories?




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CGI - Common Gateway Interface

HTML requests are handled by a webserver, such as Apache.

There are different ways in which server-side scripting languages

can interact with webservers. CGI is fairly old-fashioned, slow, butsimple. Problems of CGI are:

each new CGI request spawns a new process and

session tracking is difficult.




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Webserver Extensions

Webserver extensions (such as mod perl and mod php) are fasterthan CGI because the server-side language is loaded into Apacheinstead of restarting it new for each request.

Database connections and session parameters can be keptpersistent.

Although most of the Perl code is the same for use under CGI or

mod perl, mod perl requires a bit more programming experience tobe used safely.




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Empirical Comparisons

Below are some examples from a paper by Lutz Prechelt

An empirical comparison of C, C++, Java, Perl, Python,

Rexx, and Tcl

Even though the paper is a bit old (from 2000), it illustrates thekinds of methods which can be used to compare programminglanguages.




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From Prechelt (2000):




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A similar paper is Gousios & Spinellis (2002) A Comparison ofPortable Dynamic Web Content Technologies for the ApacheServer.

The paper explains in more detail how CGI, templating (Php),servlets and so on work. It contains sample code for severaldifferent languages and some benchmark results for comparisons.

Both papers can be downloaded from the module website.




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Questions for the Gousios/Spinellis paper

What are the four different approaches for server-side weblanguages?

Which of the following three use essentially the same scripts:Perl/CGI, FastCGI, mod perl?

Which of the following three is slowest/fastest: Perl/CGI,FastCGI, mod perl?

What is the main difference between PHP/ASP andPerl/Servlets?

Which of the following six is worst/best at maintaining states:FastCGI, Perl/CGI, mod perl, ASP, Servlets, PHP?




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Questions for both papers

Which server-side technologies are best for fast prototyping?

Is there any technology among the following that runs so

slowly that it should not be used for complicated applications:Perl/CGI, FastCGI, PHP, Java Servlets, Python, C++?

Describe a low-cost method for comparing different server-sidetechnologies.


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Questions for Empirical Evaluation of Server Side Languages