Every once and again is good to refresh your memory with some good old definitions. I stumbled once again with the need to explain which are the softwares, programming languages and companies that take most of the actual share of the market in terms of “Internet development”. As gathering that kind of list with companies, groups, programming languages, service oriented companies, service providers, Internet access providers, etc would take an eternity, here goes a little glossary that you can use to understand what kind of part does each “organization” takes in today’s web development.

We will divide the article into 4 major sections: Internet organisations, coding languages, database softwares and private corporations.

Internet contralors or Internet standards organisations:

ICANN:

To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer - a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn’t have one global Internet.

ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit partnership of people from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers.

ICANN doesn’t control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn’t deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet’s naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet.

TLD’S/Registrars:

A domain name registrar is a company accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and/or by a national ccTLD authority to register Internet domain names. These “retail” companies are often distinct from the “wholesale” domain name registry operator.

ICANN has authority over gTLDs, or Generic Top Level Domains. Examples of gTLDs include .com, .net, .org and .mobi. ICANN does not have authority over ccTLDs, or Country Code Top-Level Domains, though it is quite common for domain name registrars to offer ccTLD registration services as well. Most registrars provide DNS hosting service, but this is not required, and is often considered a separate service.

Programming languages:
This are the most used and most popular programming languages, some of them have migrated from previos coding languages, some of them are derived from what we would call “server side” of your webpage, others, tend wo work directly on the user side when you visit a web page.

PHP: From whatis.com

- PHP is a script language and interpreter that is freely available and used primarily on Linux Web servers. PHP, originally derived from Personal Home Page Tools, now stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, which the PHP FAQ describes as a “recursive acronym.”

PHP is an alternative to Microsoft’s Active Server Page (ASP) technology. As with ASP, the PHP script is embedded within a Web page along with its HTML. Before the page is sent to a user that has requested it, the Web server calls PHP to interpret and perform the operations called for in the PHP script.

An HTML page that includes a PHP script is typically given a file name suffix of “.php” “.php3,” or “.phtml”. Like ASP, PHP can be thought of as “dynamic HTML pages,” since content will vary based on the results of interpreting the script .NET

.NET:

The Microsoft .NET Framework is a software component that is a part of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It has a large library of pre-coded solutions to common program requirements, and manages the execution of programs written specifically for the framework. The .NET Framework is a key Microsoft offering, and is intended to be used by most new applications created for the Windows platform.

The pre-coded solutions that form the framework’s Base Class Library cover a large range of programming needs in areas including: user interface, data access, database connectivity, cryptography, web application development, numeric algorithms, and network communications. The class library is used by programmers who combine it with their own code to produce applications.

Programs written for the .NET Framework execute in a software environment that manages the program’s runtime requirements. This runtime environment, which is also a part of the .NET Framework, is known as the Common Language Runtime (CLR). The CLR provides the appearance of an application virtual machine, so that programmers need not consider the capabilities of the specific CPU that will execute the program. The CLR also provides other important services such as security mechanisms, memory management, and exception handling. The class library and the CLR together compose the .NET Framework.

The .NET Framework is included with Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, and can be installed on most older versions of Windows.

JSP: JavaServerPages

- (From whatis.com) Java Server Page (JSP) is a technology for controlling the content or appearance of Web pages through the use of servlets, small programs that are specified in the Web page and run on the Web server to modify the Web page before it is sent to the user who requested it. Sun Microsystems, the developer of Java, also refers to the JSP technology as the Servlet application program interface (API). JSP is comparable to Microsoft’s Active Server Page (ASP) technology. Whereas a Java Server Page calls a Java program that is executed by the Web server, an Active Server Page contains a script that is interpreted by a script interpreter (such as VBScript or JScript) before the page is sent to the user.

An HTML page that contains a link to a Java servlet is sometimes given the file name suffix of .JSP.

ColdFusion (from adobe) is an application server and software development framework used for the development of computer software in general, and dynamic web sites in particular. In this regard, ColdFusion is a similar product to Microsoft ASP.NET, JavaServer Pages or PHP. the upside of coldfusion is that is very good to deploy quick internet applications de to its handshakes with other adobe products both server and client side.

Database Softwares:

there are 3 major database server side softwares used in most of the online websites you see every day. MYSQL, MSSQL2007 and ORACLE, this last one is said to be one of the most secure and reliable databases, its used mostly in big websites with lots of database request, note that micorosft’s MSSQL 2007 handles requests for websites like NASDAQ and other very powerful sites, MYSQL on the other hand also has enterprise level quality, but as comes from the open source world, there are many updates and goodies together with the APACHE SERVER platform, that converted this database as one of the most popular one for the every day website development. All of them are Very good if they are properly handled and configured.

Private corporations/ other companies that add value to the web:

There are “n” companies that define their business around internet. Design and development agencies, open source organisations that create web software, digital security firms, Internet service providers…