4. Introduction to Back End Technology

Section 4. Introduction to Back-End Technology

Any programming/scripting that runs on the web server is referred to as Server Side scripting. It may be:

In year 1994 Rasmus Lerdorf has written a set of CGI scripts to track a visitor to his online resume. He opens sources the scripts and named it Personal Home Page (PHP).
In 1997 developers named Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski rewrote the existing parser and released PHP 3.0, renaming it HyperText PreProcessor.
As PHP was free and open source it attracted a wide community of developers
PHP paired with other open source tools like Linux, Apache, and MySQL
PHP was very easy to learn so it became one of the most important and widely used back end/server side scripting language to build robust/dynamic sites
PHP is embedded within HTML but .php, .asp, .cfm pages must process/render on the server before it displays in browser
Note - .php, .asp, .cfm or any other server-side scripting files will not run locally, you just need some software like MAMP, WAMP, XAMPP to set/create server environment on local

JSP (Java Server Pages)
- Part of the larger Java framework and used by Java programmers
- Scripts are combinations of XML and Java scriptlets
- Used in enterprise level sites but can be used for any sized sites or applications
.NET
- VB .NET is referred as .NET but its part of the larger .NET framework
- Used in enterprise level sites or applications
ColdFusion (Adobe ColdFusion)
- ColdFusion is added to the page through its own markup language called as CFML much like HTML
Python
- Powerful open source multi-purpose development language
Ruby
- General purpose development language
- Its popular due to Ruby-on-Rails web framework

Data used in websites/applications must stored in Database for future uses and retrievals like User Name, Password, Authentication details, Profile, Product list, Pricing and so on
At client side ie in the browser due to security purpose, we can store a very less and limited amount of data
DBMS (Database Management System)
- Store data in tables
RDBMS (Relational Database Management System)
- Store data in tables that relate to each other
- Allows complex sorting and filtering of data
- MySQL, Sybase, Oracle, SQLite
Non-Relational Database (No SQL database)
- NoSQL database store data in object driven datasets
- Faster to index and scale easier than relational databases
- MongoDB, Cassandra, CouchDB, SimpleDB, HBase

The Standard Query Language for managing and retrieving information from databases.
SQL syntax is simple and logical, easy to learn
select, insert, update, delete such simple keyword-based syntax statement used to manipulate data

An application to control creation, management, publishing and archiving sites content
A good CMS can speed up creation, updating of content faster, manage user groups, controls content as per roles
Web-based CMS assist in the creation, publishing and archiving of site content, also provides advanced control over site functionality such as blogging, community boards, and e-commerce.

A system for delivering content over a distributed network of servers
As a developer no need to download all libraries on local and do development, use CDN path to include required libraries, it will be cached and downloaded faster
CDNs are largely used to serve static resources such as JavaScript/CSS libraries, videos or other site dependencies

Usually refers to distributed processes over the internet

Github is built around Git an open source version control system
GitHub is an online distribution service that allows users to store repositories online that can be version controlled and shared with other users
Allows to manage the project, publish files and store revisions, sharing and collaborating