Phalanger : Compiling and Running PHP Applications on the Microsoft . NET Platform

This paper addresses major issues related to compilation of applications written in the PHP language and their solutions proposed and implemented in the Phalanger system targeting the Microsoft .NET platform. Main focus is given to those PHP features that are specific to the interpreted and dynamic nature of this language and that are making the compilation process more challenging. Since a language compiler and runtime are usually tightly coupled, this paper also presents parts of the Phalanger runtime related to the discussed language features. Additionally, the support for various web application execution scenarios within the ASP.NET server is outlined as PHP applications usually target web servers. The effectiveness reached by the compilation to the intermediate language of the .NET platform is demonstrated in a comparison with existing products addressing an optimization of PHP code execution.