My task today was to make Rob Allen's Zend framework tutorial project run on Windows. Some years ago such task could have been a problem, but as you will see, now it's nothing special.

He came across a few hurdles along the way:

• Permissions on the wwwroot
• Routing in IIS
• Limitations with the MSSQL driver
• Possible file permissions issues

Actual PHP part is very easy to write, because only thing you need to do is to create COM object. However, making your dll's visible by PHP is a bit tricky.

He points to this tutorial as a starting point and issues he had with ComVisible and some example code that finally got things working.

My project will allow people to upload huge collections of photos (probably archived in one zip file) and get nice online gallery. Users will have selection of Ajax or Silverlight version and password protection for galleries. If I have time, I will also add ability to select different photos shuffle style, background theme and/or music, and maybe even automatic tour with captions.

He's chosen to go with the Zend Framework as a backend and has already begun setting up the server with Windows Server 2008 and IIS (as connected through a remote desktop connection).

He has also looked at Deep Zoom and Dynamic assemblies to include them into his app.

Generally, folks choose to deploy web-based applications on Windows Server because they already have Windows Server. Selling them something that will only work on Linux is a tough sell, so a competition like this that seeks to show off how well PHP works on Windows should be another small step forward for all those small ISVs like Box UK who want to sell products written in PHP - provided Microsoft actually do something marketing-wise with the results.

His idea is to build a PHP/.NET tool that can act as a web services gateway. He's already started development and blogs about getting the environment all set up - Windows Server 2008, IIS7 and PHP 5.2.9 For Windows.

He's made another post with an update on his status - finishing out the development environment with PHP up and running, setting up a database, picking an IDE (Visual Studio) and setting up a version control system (git).

In this post he takes about what he's trying to achieve with his application and some use case examples and in this other post some of the feedback he's gotten about his dev environment.

For some insane reason, I decided to enter the WinPHP Challenge and having been accepted, I now need to actually write an app! It's not like I'm not already way too busy or anything... The main reason that I decided to do the competition was so that I could learn about running PHP on IIS, particularly learning the .htacess equivalents. Also getting more familiarity with SQL Server is useful.

He talks about both the server (provided as a part of the contest) and his two application ideas - a modified example from his "Zend Framework in Action" book or a SQL Server inspector/administration tool similar to a phpMyAdmin.

He's also documenting his progress in installing Windows Server 2008, getting PHP up and running and finalizing the installation.

He's also named his application - SuccessSQL - and looks at viewing PHP errors over the network and working with MSSQL and PHP.

PHP is the language that runs the web, however, for a long time; PHP had a reputation of poor performance on Windows. Thanks to the hard work of the PHP Windows team and help from their friends in Redmond, Windows is now a first class citizen for PHP deployment as well as development. We asked two of the Core Windows PHP developers what they thought about the progress that PHP had made on Windows.

The contest is easy - make a brand new PHP application (not a port) build on a Windows and IIS7 setup. All needed licenses, software and hardware - each contestant gets their own Windows Server 2008 VPS to work on - that'll be used for the competition. Applications will be judged on originality, how complete they are, how/if they use Windows features and how well they're documented.

The contest will run from April 17th through May 31st to give you plenty of time to develop your application. You can find out more about the contest and register on this page off the Dutch PHP Conference wiki (the registration link is up there near the top).