Wide variety of tools is available for developing web applications. Experienced web developers are familiar with both client and server side languages and technologies. Most of them know more than one server side language. What is to choose from client and server side for ecommerce development? This is a logical question for it has so many options.

It's not a problem for the client side. On the one hand, there are HTML, CSS and JavaScript versus Flash with its Actionscript. The first option is that using HTML, CSS and JavaScript is the proper choice for such a complex system, which should be updated in some cases hourly. To our opinion, second disadvantage of Flash for general ecommerce shopping cart solution is that the user have to install the Flash plug-in in his web browser. Third disadvantage of the Flash shopping cart is a speed problem. Everyone has ever experienced the infinite and annoying process of loading. As a result, client side scripting technologies are not suitable for serious ecommerce applications.

From the server side you have much more possible choices. Perl, PHP, ASP, CodlFusion and other more or less widely used languages for web programming. Let's discuss the pros and cons of each major language.

Traditionally, web pages were given added functionality via CGI, typically via programs written using C or Pascal, or Unix shell scripts. Perl language (originally developed in 1987) quickly became favorite among web developers for it easy integrates into web pages. Perl is still in widespread use today. Perl is, indeed, powerful and flexible language, though it is fairly complex, so if you are not Perl pro it will take time to get familiar with it. In addition, Perl was originally designed for text processing and then adapted for usage in the web unlike to 'web-specific' languages such as ASP, ColdFusion or PHP.

ASP is a handy language with inline syntax and being a default language, it uses VBScript. It is Microsoft product hence it is targeted for use with Windows platform only. There are also versions of ASP for UNIX systems but their functionality is significantly low. Recently Microsoft has revised its strategy and chosen C# as a preferred language for ASP platform. ASP.NET based on Microsoft .Net framework has multiple tools and IDE but the choice ties you completely to MS Windows platform.

PHP is an object oriented language - though scripts need not necessarily to be developed that way. PHP is a cross platform as well as an open source, available for every major operating system and works with most of the web servers. Simple applications, such as FTP, data compression, file uploads, XML, MD5, encryption and email are not included in ASP and require expensive, third party packages to be installed. Complex functions such as dynamic images, IMAP, SNMP, dynamic flash, PDF, native access (non ODBC) to Oracle, Ovrimos, Postgre, Sybase, mSql, MSSQL, Ingres, Interbase and Informix databases, LDAP, and sockets are available for free to any installation of PHP, but are not available with ASP. While PHP supports a large number of databases, ASP initially supports only Microsoft Products. MySQL is the database that PHP closely integrates with, it is very powerful and the fastest one. Like PHP, MySQL is free. Another hidden problem regarding ASP is that of database. If you develop your site using MS Access and your website outgrows it, you should switch to MSSQL, an extremely expensive option. PHP also has multi-language support. All these advantages make PHP extremely good for ecommerce applications.

ColdFusion is another web programming language, which is quite primitive, and does not support standard operator syntax or user-defined functions. But, it is really fast and easy for display pages and database interaction. PHP is created to write applications. The language is strong and very flexible.

Benchmarking is a relative thing and one claims a product to be the best. PHP in combination with MySQL is definitely fast enough for ecommerce applications.

Our company made a rational decision and gave preference to PHP + MySQL as a platform of long perspective.