PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML. PHP generally runs on a web server, taking PHP code as its input and creating Web pages as output. However, it can also be used for command-line scripting and client-side GUI applications. PHP can be deployed on most web servers and on almost every operating system and platform free of charge. The PHP Group also provides the complete source code for users to build, customize and extend for their own use.

PHP primarily acts as a filter. The PHP program takes input from a file or stream containing text and special PHP instructions and outputs another stream of data for display..

• Improved support for object-oriented programming
• The PHP Data Objects extension, which defines a lightweight and consistent interface for accessing databases
• Performance enhancements
• Better support for MySQL and MSSQL
• Embedded support for SQLite
• Integrated SOAP support
• Data iterators
• Error handling via exceptions