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Microsoft’s ASP.net server side web technology is great for development, but until recently being able to utilize it required very specific conditions. Your server had to be running Windows Operating system, and for the most part had to be running SQL Server if you wanted to utilize a database connection.Servers running Apache technology were just out of luck regarding hosting ASP.net, until now.

The Mono Project is an open-source, Novell sponsored, project which aims to “provides the necessary software to develop and run .NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and Unix.”

Today I will focus on one aspect of the Mono project, known as Mod_Mono which is an Apache module adding ASP.net support. Straight from the project page:

Mod_Mono is an Apache 1.3/2.0/2.2 module that provides ASP.NET support for the web’s favorite server, Apache.The module passes off requests for ASP.NET pages to an external program, mod-mono-server, which actually handles the requests. The communication between the Apache module and mod-mono-server is established using a Unix socket or a TCP socket.

A very cool module allowing great possibilities. Give it a shot

The only database connection tools integrated within Visual Studio are those for Microsoft’s own SQL Server 2005. This is unfortunate for developers who prefer, or only have access to, MySQL databases. Luckily for these developers, MySQL has recently become a Visual Studio Industry Partner and released a couple of addons to ease the burden of accessing MySQL databases within Visual Studio. These tools, known as ‘connectors’, allow developers to access MySQL databases just as easily as they would SQL Server databases.

The package provides the following features:

• ADO.NET driver for MySQL
• DDEX capability
• Database object manipulation (tables, stored procedures, etc)

Download links:

• MySQL Connector/NET 5.0 (required)
• MySQL Visual Studio Plugin

Visual Studio is Microsoft�s flagship .net development environment and is considered by most to be the tool of choice for .Net development, but like all of Microsoft�s development products, it only supports languages encompassed by .Net. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to use Visual Studio for PHP as well as .Net? The team at Jcx.Software thought so, creating a fantastic Visual Studio add-on for PHP development known as VS.PHP.

Here is a brief overview of what VS.PHP brings to Visual Studio:

• PHP Syntax Highlighting
• Smarty Template support
• Code snippets
• Code auto formatting

This is not a complete feature list by any means. I suggest heading over to the VS.PHP Product Page to see for yourself all the features this software brings to VS. I highly recommend this software for any PHP developer.

Unfortunately VS.PHP is not freeware, however for professional developers, the $99 price tag is a small price to pay for what you get in return.