Operating system

Microsot Windows Small Business Server 2000/ Advanced Server: These two are variations of Microsoft. They are easy and straight to implement but are prone to attacks and viruses. Remote administration is also restrictive to few features.

Linux/Unix: (Very good as a server operating system. Easy to administrate remotely. A graphical interface exactly the same as windows operating system –Xwindows is available for novice users. Hence ability to be used as a standalone computer.)

Programming / Scripting Languages

ASP: Active Server Pages a Microsoft product, which will bind you to Microsoft Platform, which will translate to high implementation and maintenance, cost.

PHP: An open source script that is platform independent hence can run on Microsoft/linux. Easy to implement. Has a stable open source community hence updates are readily available.

Perl: A cross platform language. Difficult to develop but stable. Open source community not as reliable as PHP hence PHP preferred.

Java Server Pages: Very Robust. Cross Platform. Object Oriented, reliable. It surpasses PHP, PERL, ASP. Its difficult/costly to implement but very easy to maintain.

Other Langauges used: Visual Basic application programming, Java; inter-platform language

Databases

Oracle: Not Open source but very stable. And cross platform

Microsoft Sql 2000: Not open source and only runs on Microsoft Platform

PostgreSQL: very robust, a lot of functionality, though slower than MSQL its preferred since it handles transaction in case of any fault or error.

MySql: Very robust, a light weight database. It does not have as many function as PostgreSql but the latest releases have incorporated very many functions. Including transactions. Its faster than PostgreSql.

Microsoft Access: this database is mainly used for prototyping and demos since widely available. But we don’t recommend it for other uses.

Web servers:

Apache: Very stable, open source and very good open source community for support. Its cross platform hence non restrictive.

IIS (Internet Information Server): It’s a platform specific server. Runs on Microsoft Windows Machines. Remote administration is extremely poor.

Personal Web server: This is a platform specific server and recommended for demonstrations purposes hence should not be used for implementation of the system