Jaslabs: High performance Software

By Justin Silverton

What is Resin?

The Resin® high-performance, open source application server features load balancing for increased reliability. Caucho’s Quercus(TM) is a fast, 100% Java implementation of the PHP language allowing developers to use PHP flexibility for the web interface and Java for stability.

Benefits (From Their website)

Quercus and Quercus’ PHP libraries are written entirely in Java, thereby taking the advantages of Java applications and infusing them into PHP. PHP applications running on Quercus are simply faster, easier to develop, more capable, more secure, and more scalable than any other PHP solution.

Performance - simply faster

Quercus outperforms straight mod_php by about 4x for MediaWiki and Drupal.
PHP developers can use Java tools like profilers to get in-depth information about the PHP program performance.

Development - fast, safe, and easy

PHP extensions written in Java are fast, safe, and relatively easy to develop compared to those written in C. Since Java is the library language, developers won’t need to be paranoid about third-party libraries having C-memory problems or segvs and are freed to concentrate on solving the objectives at hand.

Capability - powerful Java technologies at the developer’s fingertips

Quercus has the best of both worlds: PHP and Java. PHP applications can take advantage of Java technologies like JMS, EJB, SOA frameworks, Hibernate, and Spring.

Security - no more pesky C memory bugs

All Quercus extensions libraries are coded in Java. Therefore, developers do not have to worry about C pointer overruns and segmentation faults from PHP extensions anymore.

Scalability - PHP for the masses, literally

Thanks to Resin, PHP applications can beautifully scale to as many servers as desired.

PHP applications can now enjoy connection pooling, distributed sessions, fail-safe load balancing, and proxy caching. These benefits require no change in the PHP code.

The open source version (There is also a commercial version available) can be downloaded Here

Benchmarks

Benchmarks can be found here

PHP Apps that have been tested with Resin (and work)

• DokuWiki 2006-11-06
• Dragonfly CMS 9.0.6.1.7
• Drupal 4.7.4
• Gallery2 2.1.2
• Joomla 1.0.11
• MediaWiki 1.9
• Phorum 5.1.16a
• phpBB 2.0.21
• phpMyAdmin 2.9.1.1
• PHProjekt 5.2
• PHP-Nuke 7.9
• Wordpress 2.0.5
• Xoops 2.0.16

Conclusion - will I be switching to resin?

It is an interesting concept, but I think I will have to do some major benchmark testing before I decide to switch any of my websites to a java based php application server.