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What is PHP?
PHP is a reliable and fast server side solution. PHP is the most used
script language on the web and thousand of web developers around the
world are completely satisfied with PHP. This scripting language is
completely free you can get it accessing to its official web page. PHP
is the mayor competitor of the Microsoft ASP which is a very similar
alternative with identical capabilities but it is proprietary software.
In the case of PHP we have a completely Open Source application which
has syntax very similar to Perl and C. Commonly PHP is used along
“Apache Web Server” as a web server and “MySQL” as database engine.
PHP means “Hypertext processor” and is a server side scripting language
widely used around the globe. Server side means that the script is
directly executed in the server and end users only receive in their web
browsers the output of a server side process. With PHP you can use a
diverse type of databases such as the aforementioned MySQL but also,
Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle and every database that can be
connected through and ODBC connection, including Microsoft Access for
small projects.

Which elements could have a PHP file?
A PHP file could have scripts and HTML tags. Also the output that a
PHP file *.php send to end-user’s browser is completely in a plain
HTML. PHP has the advantage that is a cross-platform scripting
language. You can operate it on servers under Microsoft Windows and
UNIX based Operating Systems.
What do I need to start using PHP?
You must have to use three different elements to run PHP. You need have
installed a stable version of PHP. For this tutorial is recommended
PHP5. The second element you should have installed in your system is a
database engine. You can use MySQL. And the last element your need to
run PHP is a server and it can be APACHE. If you are a not experienced
user I recommend you download software that contains all these programs
in one. This software is WAMP. With WAMP SERVER you don’t have to
complicate your life installing and configuring these three tools. Just
install it and in few seconds you’ll be ready to go. For have a better
understanding of this tutorial I recommend you first study HTML and
XHTML.