Development of a Student-Oriented Intranet Portal System
David Ziegler, Class of 2000


Abstract

Background

Eighth Period

Web Based E-mail

MySQL and PHP4

Intranet Screenshot

Future Developments
  
MySQL and PHP4
    Throughout the intranet system, a database is used for user authentication, student information, and eighth period scheduling. With a high volume of connections occurring during eighth period, about 45,000 pages served per day, the server needs to be able to maintain the high volume of database queries which will occur during a brief period. Other sites which had a high dependency on their database have used MySQL for their database server, due to its open source nature, and its high speed.
    For the generation of the pages on the site, PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) was used for multiple reasons. PHP allows for easy connectivity to MySQL databases, as well as iterating through rows retrieved. Using PHP, one can code in a C-like language, using some structure borrowed from Perl, allowing for an easy programming environment. In the latest PHP release, 4.0, beta 3, support for compiling pages is included in the PHP server, allowing for even higher speed than previous versions, which had to parse the PHP source code on every page request. Additionally, the latest version of PHP provides built-in functions for array manipulation, which simplifies coding and speeds the page generation further.