LAMP stack

LAMP, as the name suggests is a typical model of software subsystems (historically Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) bundled together to give a platform on the top of which web service based and similar applications may be deployed.

Why LAMP?

1.      Components are largely interchangeable. The software subsystems may vary, but since Linux, Apache, MYSQL and PHP are free, this combination is considered to be most common.  Other common variants are:

·         LAPP - Linux, Apache, PostGreSQL, Perl/Python/PHP

·         WAMP - Windows, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Python/PHP

·         MAMP - Macintosh, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Python/PHP

·         BAMP - BSD, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Python/PHP

·         WIMP - Windows, IIS, MySQL, Perl/Python/PHP

·         AMP - no operating system

We may justify why LAMP stack, by listing all the benefit of the components used and beauty is the interchangeability of the components, so choose the benefits you like.

2.      Availability of vast variety of free plugins make it even more lucrative; for example netsniff-ng (free Linux network analyzer and networking toolkit), Snort (an open source network-based intrusion detection system), RRDtool (round-robin database tool), Nagios (offers monitoring and alerting services for servers, switches, applications and services),collectd (a Unix daemon that collects, transfers and stores performance data of computers and network equipment) and  Cacti(web-based network monitoring and graphing tool) etc.

3.      Supports multiple server farm solutions for high loads and better availability. This is possible with additional components like load balancer.

4.      Deployment of applications is straight forward, in most scenarios, it may be copy and paste content. For most of the Linux based system, this is available by default.

5.      Security may not be an issue, being an open source and large user base, problems are resolved faster than what you could expect from other paid products.

6.      You may use various free packages to configure LAMP and similar solutions. One such famous package is XAMPP (cross platform, Apache, MYSQL/MariaDB, PHP, Perl) with vast variety of add-ons available for XAMPP.

Drawbacks of LAMP stack

Most of the time, when we are counting drawbacks of LAMP, we are cursing one of the software component being treated as one of the four layers or how they are integrated.

For example we may say, Apache is not the highest performant today in market, or point some issues in PHP or MYSQL and so on. 

You have to be very careful about choosing the right components, say the functionalities you need in your application need PHP 7.0, but if solution you are going for doesn’t support latest version at all, you may be in trouble (even though it may not be considered as a drawback for you since you know this issue and you will plan accordingly now). 

Alternative Technologies

LAMP is used to serve web content and pretty much everything which is capable of this feature, is an alternative in my opinion, be it the c# and .Net based webAPI’s or Java Servlet API  and so on. But when we talk about alternative technologies, we are generally changing one of the components and comparing them due to a variation in underlying components. For example LEMP stack (Linux, Nginx, MariaDB/MySQL, PHP) is a variant where Nginx replaces Apache. Few of the other variations are listed under “Why LAMP?” section above.

Mean Stack is termed as collection JavaScript based technologies used to develop web applications and I feel the strongest competitor today. It consists Node.js (server side JavaScript execution environment), Express (lightweight framework used to build web applications in Node, MongoDB ( schemaless NoSQL database system, considered far more better than MYSQL and similar) and AngularJS ( JavaScript framework developed by Google).

§  MongoDB is built for cloud and with lesser cost for better hardware today makes it more appealing than MYSQL and related. (But who says DB layer in LAMP cannot be MongoDB !!!)

§  Agreed, Node.js simplify the application development.

Benefits of Mean stack over LAMP stack are covered in lot more depth by Wayner (2015).

References

Brown, M. (2007, August 24). Understanding LAMP and its effect on web development. Retrieved from http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Computer_Science/LAMP.asp

Howitt, J. M. (2010, January 27). What are the advantages and disadvantages of running PHP on Windows [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2145108/what-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-running-php-on-windows

Leith, E. (2011, March 28). What are some disadvantages of LAMP stack? [Web log comment]. Retrieved from https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-disadvantages-of-LAMP-stack

LEMP [Computer software]. (2016). Retrieved from https://lemp.io/

Telly, B. (2013, March 08). Re-writing a large web application - alternatives to LAMP [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189771/re-writing-a-large-web-application-alternatives-to-lamp

Wayner, P. (2015, June 22). LAMP diehards take note: The flexible simplicity of MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS, and Node.js is no joke. Retrieved from http://www.infoworld.com/article/2937159/application-development/mean-vs-lamp-your-next-programming-project.html

XAMPP [Computer software]. (2015, December 31). Retrieved from https://www.apachefriends.org/add-ons.html