for permanent services, is Java preferable to PHP?

[lawrence]

I want to offer my friends a ping service, where certain of their
pages will be called once a week. My impression is that no PHP script
can be made to run very long. Assuming a situation where I don't have
access to cron, should I write the service as Java application and set
it to run forever on my webserver?

Or let's put it another way. Assume I want to write a remind service,
where people are reminded of friend's birthdays. Should I assume this
is better done in Java than PHP?

[Andy Hassall]

Re: for permanent services, is Java preferable to PHP?

On 18 Jul 2004 14:07:08 -0700, lkrubner@geocit ies.com (lawrence) wrote:
[color=blue]
>I want to offer my friends a ping service, where certain of their
>pages will be called once a week. My impression is that no PHP script
>can be made to run very long. Assuming a situation where I don't have
>access to cron, should I write the service as Java application and set
>it to run forever on my webserver?[/color]

I don't see any clear advantage to using Java over PHP in such a way, both
would be bad. cron really is the way to go here; why are you assuming it is
unavailable?

If it is truly unavailable, I'd knock up a small shell script or C program to
emulate it using sleep() calls, to keep the always-running part as lightweight
as possible. Both PHP and Java have noticable memory footprints.

PHP can run for as long as you like, it just has by default a limiter on it as
its normal usage is in response to HTTP requests, where it doesn't make sense
to have very long runtimes. This can easily be disabled.
[color=blue]
>Or let's put it another way. Assume I want to write a remind service,
>where people are reminded of friend's birthdays. Should I assume this
>is better done in Java than PHP?[/color]

Given that this should be run at most once per day, it's not the language
that's the issue, it's the scheduling.

--
Andy Hassall <andy@andyh.co. uk> / Space: disk usage analysis tool
http://www.andyh.co.uk / http://www.andyhsoftware.co.uk/space

[Chung Leong]

Re: for permanent services, is Java preferable to PHP?

"lawrence" <lkrubner@geoci ties.com> wrote in message
news:da7e68e8.0 407181307.4cab5 65f@posting.goo gle.com...[color=blue]
> I want to offer my friends a ping service, where certain of their
> pages will be called once a week. My impression is that no PHP script
> can be made to run very long. Assuming a situation where I don't have
> access to cron, should I write the service as Java application and set
> it to run forever on my webserver?
>
> Or let's put it another way. Assume I want to write a remind service,
> where people are reminded of friend's birthdays. Should I assume this
> is better done in Java than PHP?[/color]

A really dumb (or clever, depending on your perspective) way to submit the
URL to the script Google and other search service. When the search-bot
update its database, your script would be called.


--
Obey the Clown - http://www.conradish.net/bobo/

[lawrence]

Re: for permanent services, is Java preferable to PHP?

"Chung Leong" <chernyshevsky@ hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<3vqdnaIb2 bvPgWbdRVn-qw@comcast.com> ...[color=blue]
> "lawrence" <lkrubner@geoci ties.com> wrote in message
> news:da7e68e8.0 407181307.4cab5 65f@posting.goo gle.com...[color=green]
> > I want to offer my friends a ping service, where certain of their
> > pages will be called once a week. My impression is that no PHP script
> > can be made to run very long. Assuming a situation where I don't have
> > access to cron, should I write the service as Java application and set
> > it to run forever on my webserver?
> >That
> > Or let's put it another way. Assume I want to write a remind service,
> > where people are reminded of friend's birthdays. Should I assume this
> > is better done in Java than PHP?[/color]
>
> A really dumb (or clever, depending on your perspective) way to submit the
> URL to the script Google and other search service. When the search-bot
> update its database, your script would be called.[/color]

That is clever, but not reliable, yes?

[lawrence]

Re: for permanent services, is Java preferable to PHP?

Andy Hassall <andy@andyh.co. uk> wrote in message news:<f3tlf0l9k asknhirj0r173hc 5ariet12n2@4ax. com>...[color=blue]
> On 18 Jul 2004 14:07:08 -0700, lkrubner@geocit ies.com (lawrence) wrote:
>[color=green]
> >I want to offer my friends a ping service, where certain of their
> >pages will be called once a week. My impression is that no PHP script
> >can be made to run very long. Assuming a situation where I don't have
> >access to cron, should I write the service as Java application and set
> >it to run forever on my webserver?[/color]
>
> I don't see any clear advantage to using Java over PHP in such a way, both
> would be bad. cron really is the way to go here; why are you assuming it is
> unavailable?
>
> If it is truly unavailable, I'd knock up a small shell script or C program to
> emulate it using sleep() calls, to keep the always-running part as lightweight
> as possible. Both PHP and Java have noticable memory footprints.
>
> PHP can run for as long as you like, it just has by default a limiter on it as
> its normal usage is in response to HTTP requests, where it doesn't make sense
> to have very long runtimes. This can easily be disabled.
>[color=green]
> >Or let's put it another way. Assume I want to write a remind service,
> >where people are reminded of friend's birthdays. Should I assume this
> >is better done in Java than PHP?[/color]
>
> Given that this should be run at most once per day, it's not the language
> that's the issue, it's the scheduling.[/color]

You're right, cron is available. I've thought about it and realized I
gain little advantage going with PHP or Java. My first thought was to
avoid cron because I'm trying to write my code as a software that
people can download and use in hosted environments. But hosted
environments may not allow Java applications (as opposed to Java
applets).

Still, if I were to write this service as a shell script, I'd have to
tweak it for every server I use. If I write it in PHP or Java, then I
could write it once, and I would not have to tweak it as I move from
server to server. I realize I can reset the default time out for PHP,
but I want that default limit to be there for all the PHP scripts that
run in response to http requests. I don't think I can have two
installations of PHP on my server, can I? It runs Red Hat 9 on Linux.

For all those reasons, I'm still thinking that Java might be best.
Your argument that a shell script would be much lighter than Java is a
good one, but the whole script (even in Java) is going to be so small
it doesn't seem like it can matter much anyway.