The world has moved to the web. For a number of years, Dave has been developing applications to run on the web using the LAMP platform.

LAMP is an acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP:

Linux is the name of the operating system that is used by the majority of internet servers.

Apache is the software package that implements the http protocol to serve web pages.

MySQL is the software package that implements a very powerful database engine. Most complex websites are actually stored in a database and presented to the user dynamically. Even the site you are reading now is powered by MySQL. In addition to MySQL, another common database system that we have worked with is PostGreSQL.

PHP is a scripting language that the server interprets as part of building the page to be served to the user's browser. It has a full set of capabilities especially in the area of interfacing to the database engine.

These four technologies work together as a foundation for most modern web applications and sites.