Glenn Bennett

Here’s another very confusing term used in computing. Lots of people talk about the LAMP stack. This once stood for:

Linux

Apache (web server)

MySQL

Perl

Originally this was used to let people know that there was an alternative to a proprietary stack to create applications. In particular web applications. Then things started to expand. Most commonly these days the ‘P’ has been replaced with PHP. This happened very quietly since no one could remember what the ‘P’ stood for anyway.

Then people started using some of these tools on proprietary operating systems like Windows (WAMP) and  MAC (MAMP). Tools started to be created that could be deployed on Any operating system so they just used an ‘X’ for the operating system (XAMP).

People wanted to use PHP on there windows servers that used IIS so now we have WIMP. What about other web servers like lighttpd(pronounced “lighty”) would that be LLMP? LXMP? XXMP? Also Apache  does a lot more that web servers these days so the word Apache is not really synonymous with a web server anymore. ‘M’ works for both MySQL and mSQL, but what about Postgress or SQLite? So should we change it to XXXP.

Of couse now we can do a web application that is completely JavaScript. So is it “XXXJ” or just “XXXX”?

Maybe it’s time for a new description of all of this. Heaven forbid we should communicate in a meaningful way.

Here’s my purposal:

ODWAL (odd wall)

Operating System

Data Persistence

Web Server

Application Language

Now that is as clear as mud.