If you've ever worked with WebSphere and tried to integrate it with PHP, you know the frustration Daniel Crook has faced. Thankfully, he's found the answer to this marging of technology and shares it here on his blog.

Just as you can communicate with DB2 from your PHP applications via three distinct interfaces - Unified ODBC, ibm_db2, and PDO - there are several approaches to adding PHP support to WebSphere Application Server, each with benefits and drawbacks.

As a disclaimer, I don't claim to represent IBM or provide IBM's viewpoints on this, but I'm offering this list as a general overview about what options are available as IBM continues to encourage the use of PHP in enterprise environments.

He offers four methods to getting WebSphere and PHP to play nicely together:

• Build PHP as an Apache module and connect to WAS via the Web server plugin
• Use the PHP Integration Kit to add PHP support to WebSphere Application Server Community Edition
• Use the PHP / Java Bridge
• Use an implementation of a PHP interpreter in Java

For each, there's a brief explaination as far as the steps to take to use the option and links to other resources that show in a bit more detail how to accomplish that kind of integration.