How to consolidate PHP and MySQL in Windows configuration

PHP and MySQL are a powerful combination for providing users with dynamic content. Over the years, these two products have crossed their initial application stage, and now some of the world's busiest websites are applying them. Although they were all open source software, they can only run on Unix/linux, but they have been able to run on the Windows platform for quite some time.

In this article, I'll show you step-by-step how to install and configure these products in a Windows environment. For some of you, the information presented in this article may be too simple, but this article aims to complete the goal of the article title and provide step-by-step instructions.

This particular combination of software is commonly called WIMP (windows/iis/mysql/php), emulating lamp (linux/apache/mysql/php) in the Linux field.

My lab system runs 64-bit Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.

First step: Install the Application Server role on the Windows Server 2003 R2 system

To illustrate this example, I will use IIS as a network server. You can also select the PHP, MySQL, and Apache combinations that do not require IIS, but in this case I will not use them.

To install the application Server role on the system, click "Start Menu" and select "Manage Server". In the main Management Server window, click the "Add or remove a role" option. (Figure A)

Figure A

Install the application Server role on the server so that it can do the host of the site

Windows will search for existing roles on the server, providing a complete list of roles to install. (Figure B)

Figure B

The Application server role includes IIS and asp.net

During the installation of the server role, you may be asked to insert the Windows Server CD. The required files are in CD 1.

When the installation is complete, the Management Server window is updated to reflect the new roles that are added.

Step two: Download PHP and MySQL

At this point, the server is ready to support the Web page. But because the PHP or MySQL has not been installed, the Web page is still static. Before you install PHP and mysql, you must download their Windows versions from their respective web sites.

MySQL

First describes the installation of MySQL. By the time this article was published, MySQL 5.1 was still in beta, and version 5.0 had been widely used. Even if I'm installing MySQL on 64-bit Windows, I'm going to download the 32-bit version of it. After all, PHP is also installed on the same server, and it is not common in 64-bit hardware, which means that you must also use 32-bit IIS, so there is no way to fully implement the 64-bit. There are three MySQL versions: the essence, the full version, or the installation version is not required.

Essence: The essence version is an MSI installation file designed to meet the needs of most users.

Full version: As you would expect, the full version contains more components than the essence, including a set of evaluation tools.

No installation version: This version is the same as the full version, but does not include the Configuration Wizard or the installer and must be installed manually.

In this article, the installation of the essence version can be. In this case, I name the downloaded file Mysql-essential-5.0.24a-win32.msi and save it on the desktop.

PHP

In order to increase the dynamic effect of Web pages, especially if you want to extract information from a database such as MySQL, it is necessary to use languages such as PHP. PHP has two different versions: a 4.x series version and a 5.x series version. If you want to use a script from an old web site, you may need to use the PHP 4.x series version, because some changes have been made to the 5.x series version. Because I want to build a new website, so I use the latest version. By the time this article was published, the latest version was 5.1.6.