[FX.php List] FM Scripts vs. PHP

[Derrick Fogle]

On Oct 24, 2007, at 7:34 PM, Joel Shapiro wrote:
> Anybody else care to pipe in?

As always, it depends what you're doing. If your operations are  
mostly native FM with only a small web-based presence, sticking with  
FM is probably the best choice. But I can't recommend using FM  
scripting, or even FM at all, if you're good with PHP and your  
operations are primarily web-based.

FWIW, I use FM8SA one one machine, and Apache/PHP on a nearly  
identical 2nd machine (both XServes). Processing data in PHP is so  
much faster than processing data in FM, it's not even funny. I'm  
competent enough with both FM and PHP, and I invariably fetch the  
minimum raw data required out of FM with as few actual interactions  
with FM as possible, and do any processing needed for output to a  
browser with PHP.

I can see where, if you want to update a whole bunch of FM records  
with a single web submit, you will find a point where processing in  
FM will be faster than processing in PHP, simply because of the time  
overhead of getting data in and out of FM. But I would question any  
web application that modified a whole bunch of records with a single  
web submit.

Derrick Fogle
derrick at fogles.net