PHP, Apache & Oracle setup

Question

We are planning to develop a web application on PHP & Oracle (11gR2) on Apache and the OS is RedHat AS5 update 3 (AS5.3) Linux. I would like to know the recommended versions of PHP and Apache to be used for such a setup. I have come to know that PHP and Oracle offer the best performance when Apache is running in prefork mode. In that case, I may need to install Apache 1.3. Or else I may need to install Apache 2.0 but should use the default pre-fork MPM ("Multi-Processing Module") because many of the PHP extentions are not known to be thread-safe. So not sure if installing Apache 1.3 or installing Apache 2.0 in prefork mode is better. Can anyone please provide your thoughts on this? Also what should be the PHP version?

Thanks in advance!

Sangeeth

Answer 1

• Apache : Apache 2.2 outperforms 1.3 in basically every way. That said, you should always benchmark. Just don't use a config file tuned for one version and expect it to work well for the other.
• PHP : 5.3. There's really no reason not to. Last time I benchmarked, it was no worse than 5.2 and better in some areas.
• PHP & Oracle : OCI8 and PDO_OCI are a bitch to get compiled and installed. Just a warning.

So, let me recap: benchmark, benchmark, benchmark.