Azure: ASP.NET or PHP?

Question

Would I be right in thinking that ASP.NET is better integrated with Azure than PHP? And that PHP is more likely to introduce "wrinkles" that require workarounds, fixes,etc?

I'm about to start a fairly big project, and I have chosen Azure. However I have virtually no ASP.NET experience, but a reasonable amount of PHP experience. I understand ASP.NET is meant to be easy to pick up, but it would be another thing to add to the learning curve (ie. in addition to Azure itself).  I can't see myself needing to use any of my existing PHP code (the biggest scripts I wrote from the ground up, were actually ported from C#). As for existing PHP libraries, I may well need a CMS for the front end but looking around it looks like Orchard or possibly DotNetNuke Community Edition will do the trick...

So ease of maintenance, development and ability to build a larger project is going to be more important than an extra week or two at this early learning stage.

As for "vendor lock-in" (one of the more valid points in many of the (often questionable) PHP vs. ASP.NET discussions), yes it is a concern; but I have already chosen Azure due to to its strong C# support. I will be doing quite a bit of back-end computation, and C# was a natural choice for this. (PHP or even Python would not be good enough)

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Richard Marsden
MapPoint Add-ins at Mapping-Tools.com

Answer 1

Hello,

Windows Azure Platform support multiple types of applications, such as ASP.NET, PHP, Java, Node.js, etc. Do you want to migrate exsiting PHP application from on-premise to cloud or tend to create a new application for Azure? Re-design and coding (with a new language) may costs more than migrating. You mentioned that you have amount of PHP experience but not very more experience about ASP.NET, if you dont think ASP.NET is necessary for your situation, PHP may still a good choice to you.

Now Azure has indenpendency SDK for PHP application, more details please refer to: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/php/. Here you can find step by step tutorial about how to create a PHP application on Windows Azure, if you are decide to migrate existing PHP application to Windows Azure, you need consider to add more features of Azure, such as Azure Storage, ACS, SQL Azure, etc. So I think you still need do many changes with that PHP application.

Hope this helps.

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Answer 2

Thanks for the answer - it is probably more general than what I was asking - which makes it more useful to other people.

No I don't think I will be porting any PHP.

I guess the crux of my question is: Is ASP.NET dev for Azure easier? Eg. is it better integrated?

At the end of the day, only I can decide which to go for - I'm just looking at guidance in the unknown variables. It seems that PHP may become a mess 6-12 months own the road, whilst ASP.NET code might be easier to manage for a full-sized application?

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Richard Marsden
MapPoint Add-ins at Mapping-Tools.com

Answer 3

Hi,

I think so, current Azure SDK for PHP does not include some APIs for Azure Service, if you need use PHP application, maybe is a little complex if you want to use them, such as ServiceBus, Caching service, etc. You need treat them as normal REST service, and generate request body by yourself. 

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Please mark the replies as answers if they help or unmark if not. If you have any feedback about my replies, please contact [e-mail] Microsoft One Code Framework