SC 8.1 and PHP 5.4 vs PHP 5.6 Performance

Scriptcase 8 Discussion
#1

I have just upgraded to SC 8.1 from 8.0. I did not do a reinstall, but just used the “Update Version” menu point in the “Help” menu of the SC IDE.

From reading posts on this forum and watching the video covering the new features of SC 8.1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-AX3TBlCEk), I understand that in order to see the performance improvements, you would have to do a reinstall of SC in order to get the PHP 5.6. However, I have some questions that I hope someone with actual experience / certain knowledge (e.g. SC themselves) can shed some light on:

  1. Are there really marked differences in the development environment using PHP 5.6?
    Are e.g. the speed of application generation or changing between code sections in the IDE so much faster that it is really worth reinstalling?

  2. If I generate applications with SC 8.1, PHP 5.6, will there also be a performance increase in the production environment (i.e. the generated applications) if it runs PHP 5.6?
    If so, in which areas can they be seen, and is the difference in performance large enough that it is worth bothering with?

  3. If I generate applications with SC 8.1, PHP 5.6, will the applications be able to run without errors in a PHP 5.4 production environment?

  4. Has anyone yet tried to deploy full application, generated with SC 8.1, PHP 5.6 and deployed to a PHP 5.6 productions environment?

#2
  1. Are there really marked differences in the development environment using PHP 5.6?
    Are e.g. the speed of application generation or changing between code sections in the IDE so much faster that it is really worth reinstalling?

to my experiences, your old applications do not benefit from the speed upgrade. Not sure why because new projects are really fast compared to php 5.4.

  1. If I generate applications with SC 8.1, PHP 5.6, will there also be a performance increase in the production environment (i.e. the generated applications) if it runs PHP 5.6?
    If so, in which areas can they be seen, and is the difference in performance large enough that it is worth bothering with?

that’s hard to tell. in general the speed increase for scriptcase goes for generating applications, at least the time consuming issues. My webapplications are in general just form apps and then the speed of internet, server etc. are by far more in effect then the processing time of your application.

  1. If I generate applications with SC 8.1, PHP 5.6, will the applications be able to run without errors in a PHP 5.4 production environment?

Yes. There is no change in the generated php itself.

  1. Has anyone yet tried to deploy full application, generated with SC 8.1, PHP 5.6 and deployed to a PHP 5.6 productions environment?

No, we currently have no php 5.6 production environment. But it might depend on your own code, i.e. what you put in into the events. If you build it for the features of 5.6 then don’t expect it to run well under 5.4.

#3

Thanks for sharing your experience!

I assume that by the above, you mean that in a reinstalled development environment with PHP 5.6, new applications in a new project is faster to work with, compared to applications in an older project made with SC 8.0, which has been exported and imported to SC 8.1?

The reason I am asking for the confirmation/clarification is, that if there is no way to get the performance improvement on existing projects except for a reimplementation, it does not seem worth the trouble until next time one starts a brand new project. On the other hand, if there is way (e.g. export/import of existing applications into a new project), I may consider the reinstall earlier.

Are there any other advantages, besides performance, to a full reinstall vs just upgrading the existing development environment to 8.1?

#4

I have deployed apps on 5.6 without troubles, Linux and windows enviroments.

I notice improvement in performance in general, I did not do benchmarks, but,is,noticeable.

In my experience, my suggestion is, upgrade,if,there,aren’t too much projects involved.

Didint tried either if ita possible to move just SC database to SC PHP 5.6 installation

#5

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I have already upgraded and my projects work fine.

However, I will consider a reinstall also later since per Albert, applications created in the PHP 5.6 development environment does work faster, whereas applications developed under PHP 5.4 and just imported to the PHP 5.6 environment does not gain any performance improvement in the development environment. Is that your experience as well?

#6

All my php5.4 projects imported on php5.6 works faster IMHO​

#7

It warms my heart to hear that :).
Otherwise, I am sure that I would constantly be irritated by applications from older projects that would be running slower in the PHP 5.6 environment as compared to new ones, as I would not be willing to waste time reimplementing the old ones all over again.