On the PHPClasses blog today the question is posed "can .NET make PHP run faster than the official PHP implementation?" (relating to the use of the Phalanger tool to compile PHP down to .NET assemblies.

Recently Phalanger 3.0 was released introducing numerous improvements in terms of compatibility with the PHP 5.3, interoperability with .NET platform implementations including Mono on Linux, and probably most importantly performance improvements. [...] What motivated this article was that a PHP developer named Rasmus Schultz went on the php.internals mailing list and proposed to switch the official PHP implementation based on Zend for another based on Phalanger.

The post includes some benchmarking results of requests made to a WordPress instance running on various PHP platforms. The Phalanger version came in around 2 seconds faster (average, obviously) than the PHP FastCGI setup. Also included are two suggestions for future PHP versions (v6 anyone?) that could help the language perform even better: Thread-safety for running with less memory waste and the inclusion of a JIT (Just in time compiler - of which a few are mentioned specifically.

On the Information World Review's blog today they ask if there's a third way (besides making the choice between PHP and .NET) that could bridge things between the two communities - Phalanger.

Now, at a programming level, a new initiative which could finally reconcile the great divide between PHP and .NET programming languages for the good of everyone - courtesy of WCM vendor Jadu. Development of the Phalanger PHP compiler was funded by the firm, but it is now releasing it into the open source community. It basically enables the creation of PHP applications which can run natively under the .NET Framework, allowing firms to make use of PHP apps without needing to rip out existing .NET/Visual Studio environments.

Phil Muncaster (author of the post) suggests that this technology is another reason to remove the "walled gardens" some .NET developers have put up and left in the flexibility and power that PHP has to offer their online development world (and vice versa).

The #php.thinktank channel on the Freenode IRC network has started their talk series with two new topics, the logs for which have been posted to the thinktank website.

The two topics so far have been:

• SLP by Davey Shafik
• php.NET (phalanger) by zaemis

The #php.thinktank channel on the Freenode IRC network has started their talk series with two new topics, the logs for which have been posted to the thinktank website.

The two topics so far have been:

• SLP by Davey Shafik
• php.NET (phalanger) by zaemis

eWeek reports today that Microsoft is taking the first steps toward extending its support for other scripting languages with a new project to ry to run PHP on .NET.

Known as Phalanger, the project reached Version 2.0 Beta 2 on July 30.

The primary goal of the project, released under Microsoft Shared Source Permissive License, is to enable full functionality of existing PHP scripts on .Net without any modification, Microsoft said. Unlike the original PHP interpreter, Phalanger compiles scripts into MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language).

The article goes on to talk about the project, the advantages it has over previous attempts, and where it's headed in the future. You can check out the CodePlex site here.

eWeek reports today that Microsoft is taking the first steps toward extending its support for other scripting languages with a new project to ry to run PHP on .NET.

Known as Phalanger, the project reached Version 2.0 Beta 2 on July 30.

The primary goal of the project, released under Microsoft Shared Source Permissive License, is to enable full functionality of existing PHP scripts on .Net without any modification, Microsoft said. Unlike the original PHP interpreter, Phalanger compiles scripts into MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language).

The article goes on to talk about the project, the advantages it has over previous attempts, and where it's headed in the future. You can check out the CodePlex site here.