Monday, September 22, 2008
PHP History
PHP is created in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf to its Web site. It was originally a software library in Perl which he used to keep track of visitors who came to visit his CV. As it added new features, Rasmus has transformed the library into an implementation in C, able to communicate with databases and create dynamic and simple applications for the Web. Rasmus then decided in 1995 to publish its code, so that everyone can use and enjoy. PHP then PHP / FI (for Personal Home Page Tools / Form Interpreter). In 1997, two students, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, redéveloppèrent the heart of PHP / FI. This work led one year later with Zend Engine, the new heart of PHP / FI, then became PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor version 3. [5]
In 2002, PHP is used by more than 8 million websites around the world [6], and in 2004 by more than 15 million [ref. desired].
A paradoxical indicator of the popularity of PHP is the number of security vulnerabilities related applications with PHP and listed on an identifier CVE database American vulnerabilities (National Vulnerability Database). These faults represent 12% of the total in 2003, 20% in 2004, 28% in 2005, 43% in 2006, 36% in 2007, 38% on the first two months of 2008. More than a quarter of vulnerabilities identified on this basis relates to PHP applications, more than a third in recent years, and most can be operated remotely [7]. These vulnerabilities are due to bad habits programming (often a lack of validation of entries) along with questionable features of language itself (for example, register globals, now discouraged [8]).
The current version is version 5, released on July 13 in 2004 [9]. It uses Zend Engine 2 and introduces a true object model, management errors based on the model of exceptions, as well as management features for businesses. PHP 5 offers many new features, such as support for SQLite, which is a lightweight database management board, to the detriment of the MySQL client library, more powerful but is now enabled by default, and as ways to manipulate files and structures based on XML libxml2:
* A simple API called SimpleXML,
* API Document Object Model fairly complete,
* XPath interface using the DOM objects and SimpleXML,
* Integration of libxslt for XSLT transformation via XSL extension,
* A much better management of objects in relation to PHP 4, with opportunities equivalent to those of Java.
The last update is 5.2.6 on 1 May 2008 [10].
Version 4.4.x is no longer maintained since 31 December 2007 [9], [11]. Only critical security patches will be further developed until 8 August 2008 [11].
The next version of PHP: PHP 6 is still under development and will be available in late 2008.
In 2002, PHP is used by more than 8 million websites around the world [6], and in 2004 by more than 15 million [ref. desired].
A paradoxical indicator of the popularity of PHP is the number of security vulnerabilities related applications with PHP and listed on an identifier CVE database American vulnerabilities (National Vulnerability Database). These faults represent 12% of the total in 2003, 20% in 2004, 28% in 2005, 43% in 2006, 36% in 2007, 38% on the first two months of 2008. More than a quarter of vulnerabilities identified on this basis relates to PHP applications, more than a third in recent years, and most can be operated remotely [7]. These vulnerabilities are due to bad habits programming (often a lack of validation of entries) along with questionable features of language itself (for example, register globals, now discouraged [8]).
The current version is version 5, released on July 13 in 2004 [9]. It uses Zend Engine 2 and introduces a true object model, management errors based on the model of exceptions, as well as management features for businesses. PHP 5 offers many new features, such as support for SQLite, which is a lightweight database management board, to the detriment of the MySQL client library, more powerful but is now enabled by default, and as ways to manipulate files and structures based on XML libxml2:
* A simple API called SimpleXML,
* API Document Object Model fairly complete,
* XPath interface using the DOM objects and SimpleXML,
* Integration of libxslt for XSLT transformation via XSL extension,
* A much better management of objects in relation to PHP 4, with opportunities equivalent to those of Java.
The last update is 5.2.6 on 1 May 2008 [10].
Version 4.4.x is no longer maintained since 31 December 2007 [9], [11]. Only critical security patches will be further developed until 8 August 2008 [11].
The next version of PHP: PHP 6 is still under development and will be available in late 2008.