NuSphere Corporation announced support for web services developed with an integrated package of NuSphere® PHPEd and popular open source technologies, such as Apache, Perl and MySQL. To aid developers in building web services with PHP, sample source code and a white paper is now available on the NuSphere web site. While proprietary web services tools are available for programming languages such as C# and Java, NuSphere is the first to offer integrated support for the popular open source PHP language. PHP is the fastest, most cost effective way to build and run web services applications available at this time.

Currently available on NuSphere's web site (www.nusphere.com) is a basic phonebook web service, which illustrates how PHP can be used as a fast and easy development tool for web services. NuSphere customers can download both the source code for this web service and a white paper outlining how PHP can be used for this type of application.

"As web services become an accepted way to build applications, tools for every language are needed to build these services. NuSphere is the first company to enable the widely used PHP scripting language for web services and help developers avoid vendor lock-in," said Britt Johnston, chief technology officer and co-founder of NuSphere Corporation. "Developers who want to avoid Microsoft's take-over of web services will find a faster, easier and more cost-effective means for building these services with open source."

Web services are built through a series of protocols and languages standards. These components include XML, SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), WSDL (Web Services Description Language) and UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration). Using these key standards means that no matter what programming language is used, web services do not have to be re-coded to interoperate on a variety of platforms. As with any development project, web services will soon be able to be written in the programming language each individual developer prefers.

"Rather than get locked into a single vendor's proprietary offering, we've embraced emerging standards, such as XML, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI, with leading open source tools from NuSphere," said Mark Karaman, president of Solvepoint Corporation, a business and technology services provider (www.solvepoint.com). "This strategy has allowed us to speed integration while containing costs, providing our clients with immense value and first-to-market advantages. NuSphere's support will help us further our work with PHP and other open source pieces, in addition to C and Java, as the underpinning of future web services for our clients."

NuSphere PHPEd is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that integrates a comprehensive set of editing, debugging and deployment tools that can speed development time by up to 75 percent and significantly reduce time-to-market. With this IDE, developers can take advantage of multiple platform deployment options including Windows, Linux and UNIX. For more information on NuSphere PHPEd, or the creation of Web services using NuSphere products, visit www.nusphere.com/products/index.htm.

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