How to Migrate to the Microsoft Web Platform

by Tali Smith

PHP is quite portable, and cross-platform development has been a major goal in its development. In most cases, PHP scripts are easily ported from Linux to the Windows® operating system with very few problems. Microsoft has also produced a rich set of PHP migration documentation and a toolkit to assist in basic PHP application deployment; these are located on the Internet Information Services (IIS) Web site (https://www.iis.net/).

Many popular PHP applications that have been written on and currently run on the LAMP (Linux–Apache–MySQL–PHP) stack can be successfully migrated to a Windows-based stack (Windows–IIS–MySQL–PHP). The article IIS for Apache Administrators compares common IIS 7 and above tools and management scenarios with Apache tools and management scenarios. The SQL Server Driver for PHP can also make it possible to migrate applications to a Windows–IIS–SQL Server–PHP stack. This lets customers enjoy the convenience and familiarity of the Windows operating system.

There are also many other migration scenarios. You may want to migrate to a newer version of IIS, or you may want to migrate to Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 from MySQL. The following articles can provide guidance for various migration scenarios: