Don Raman's Blog

I hear a lot about the problem where web server (IIS) throws an error saying that PHP script has timed out in our forums. Let’s try to understand the reason behind this. I will be using a Windows 7 Enterprise machine (having IIS 7.5) to explain this but this should be applicable to Windows 2008/Windows Vista too. The same can be told true for Windows 2003/Windows XP with some difference like IIS stores FastCGI configuration in fcgiext.ini file rather than application meta-base. However the concept should be exactly similar.

Few days back I made some code commit (code check-in) to WINCACHE SVN depot on PECL. I committed the test infrastructure to test WINCACHE. The entire test code can be see inside the folder at http://svn.php.net/viewvc/pecl/wincache/trunk/tests/. Let me explain how it works. In order to make it work first of all the binaries has to be compiled. This is the binary which is responsible for driving the test suite, I call it as a kind of test driver. I have already committed the the Visual Studio solution file which is at location http://svn.php.net/viewvc/pecl/wincache/trunk/tests/driver/test_wincache.sln?view=log. However the solution file is meant for Visual Studio 2008 and may not be compatible with previous versions of Visual Studio. If you are using an old version of Visual Studio you may need to create a new solution/project file (simply chose ‘WIN32 Console Application’ while creating the solution/project file). After creating a new solution just add the C++ source/header files present at http://svn.php.net/viewvc/pecl/wincache/trunk/tests/driver/test_wincache/ to the solution/project. Compile it in Visual Studio and the binaries should be made. This builds one executable which is named ‘test_wincache.exe’. You can either compile Release/Debug build but I always prefer Release build. Here is how you can use the binaries to test WINCACHE.

I recently asked user of WINCACHE to give feedback on soon-to-be-released bits of WINCACHE 1.0.1. We got mails from lot of people who came forward to help us with the testing. I would like to thank all of you there who helped us in testing the critical fix. I am still getting request for new binaries which is overwhelming. Based on the user’s feedback (which was all positive) we decided to release WINCACHE 1.0.1 today. I would advise everybody using WINCACHE to switch to the new stable version even if you are not seeing any problem with current builds. This version has got a critical fix and is good enough reason to upgrade to the newer bits.

I get a lot of forum posting in our IIS forum asking how to develop PHP application using Microsoft SQL Server. Today I am going to explain basics of developing PHP application on Microsoft SQL Server. Let me start by stating one thing, developing PHP application on Microsoft SQL Server is really easy. The extension which glues the two world namely PHP and Microsoft SQL Server is called ‘Microsoft SQL Server Driver for PHP’. Some important characteristics of this driver are:

There has been several instances where people using WINCACHE have reported problem while running it on the actual production server. They have complained that WINCACHE works very well on development server but the users can see a crash (or different symptoms of it) while actually deploying it on a live production server. I am pasting some of the forum links where these kind of problems have been reported:

Today I am going to talk about installing some of the top PHP applications on IIS. The installation steps for all these applications are almost similar and you need to just sit back and relax, click few buttons and installation is done. I will cover following applications today:

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