Hello Dave,
You probably bored of me, but this time round I desperately need your hones opinion. I have little bit of ASP.NET knowledge and managed to put together an application that based on various mainstream price comparison sites. I am thinking of converting to Windows where I will be able to use PHP, MYSQL, MSSQL and ASP.NET with IIS7.
Now most of my sites are based on your PT. Only 4/5 Sites will use my ASP.NET. What would I lose if I do use Windows? I am thinking of mostly backend process i.e. cron.php, import.php also I know your corn.php uses cURL to fetch the data, would that work?
Could you please help me out as I cannot afford to have 2 servers and VSPs are not that cheap either. I technically could run Virtual Machine on my current server (which is linux) but it would be too technical for me - I cannot take chances if something goes wrong all my site (about 25 of them) will go down.
Please tell me what I loose and what I gain being on windows
Your urgent feedback is really appreciated.
Noor
ummm, If I do go for Windows, I would probably go IIS7 setup rather than WAMP. On other day I was playing with one of my old computer, I had bits and pieces od RAM, HDD etc.. I have loaded a trial version Windows Server 2008 R" Enterprise version. I was really surprise that IIS7 had built in support for PHP and you could load and unload different modules, tweak it's configurations all using GUI within IIS Management interface.
One other very nice feature I liked that you can actually mimmick the apache's URL Rewrite (similar to rules you put in .htaccess) using Graphical Interface.
My main point is, If could run all my websites whether it uses PHP, ASP, ASP.NET and at the same time I get all usual features of linux or alternatives then I would seriously consider it. Concern I have here is.. is it fast enough, reliable enough and am I missing out on anything - importantly on reliability side?
By the way dave have look at my site www.bestbuyers.co.uk see what can be done with your script. Your comment on that really appreciated.
Thanks for your feedback so qickly.
Noor
Sounds good Noor, IIS is a well established and highly capable web server so I don't think you'll have any problems.
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
what is the fundemental difference between mssql and mysql. can PT modified to use the MSSQL databases rather than MySQL? What would be pro and cons of either of them?
Hello Noor,
MSSQL is PHP's interface to Microsoft's SQL Server. Whilst theoretically includes/database.php could be rewritten to use this; I couldn't guarantee that all the query styles would be compatible; or of course provide any kind of support using the script with MSSQL...
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Hello Noor,
I've always made sure that everything within Price Tapestry is capable of running on either Linux or Windows systems (e.g. WAMP) - the only thing I would give in Linux' favour is that I have far more experience supporting the script on that platform, that's all!
In terms of the automation scripts; if you weren't already aware checkout the excellent GNU Win32 project where pretty much all the standard linux scripts used by Price Tapestry automation (e.g. unzip, gzip) are available in Windows versions:
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com