Abbreviated as PHP, personal homepage [tools], it is a hypertext preprocessor and an open-source, cross-platform, server-side, HTML embedded scripting language. It is used primarily for producing dynamic web pages and server-side applications. PHP runs on the two most popular web server configurations, i.e. IIS running on Windows NT and apache on UNIX. It has the added advantage in the field of IT Services that it can run on multiple operating systems and web servers. When executed on the web server, the client is unable to view the PHP code. It has many open-source libraries with core build and many others are increasingly available.

PHP developers can do any task like any CGI program can but the strength depends on the compatibility with the database types. This can also talk across different networks using SNMP, POP3, NNTP, IMAP or HTTP. PHP scripts are enclosed within special PHP tags, due to which the author can jump between HTML and PHP saving one to rely on heavy amounts of code output HTML. Created in 1994, by Rasmus Lerdorf, PHP was designed as a small binary set to collect some traffic data of the site. However, in 1997 it entered the hands of other contributors who wrote advanced versions of the same i.e. PHP version 3.

Just a few of the numerous things PHP can perform, by the use of an external library and function, PHP can:

• Building of templates to ease the maintenance of site.
• Creating graphics on fly.
• It serves varied contents to the users depending on their browser, date and time, IP address and various other characteristics.
• It conducts online surveys.
• Used for connecting databases like MySQL or Oracle to web.
• Helps in communication with external web sites.
• Helps in building discussion forums or email programs which are web-based.
• Processing and reading or parsing of XML.
• Helps in generating PDF documents.

PHP can send HTTP headers; additionally can also manipulate the content of the web pages. It can even set cookies, redirect users and manage authentication. Evolved to include in a command line interface it can be even used as a standalone graphical applications. It is often considered, as the main competitor of Microsoft C# (visual basic.net and ASP family), macromedia cold fusion, CGI- Perl, Sun Java JSP. However, unlike ColdFusion or ASP, PHP is open-source and cross-platform.

PHP has few primary object-oriented functions, which help to organize and encapsulate code. It goes right into web pages, so there is no need for the development of any special or IDE environment. The incorporation of PHP tools, simplifies PHP development tasks including; debugging, editing, profiling and deploying advanced web applications.