Stratos Requirements and Dependencies

PHP

Stratos is a web framework for PHP written in PHP, so PHP is required for it to be of any use. Stratos is compatible with both PHP 4 and 5. It will work with any version of PHP 5 and fairly recent versions of PHP 4.

You can get PHP at http://www.php.net/.

PHP Extensions

• json: If you plan to use Stratos's Ajax features, this extension is recommended. If this extension does not exist, Stratos will try to use a pure PHP json encoder, PEAR::Services_JSON, which is significantly slower than a native encoder. If neither option is available, the Stratos/Request/getJSON action will not be available.
• wddx: If available, this extension will be used by the Stratos/Request/getWDDX action. If it is not present, Stratos will attempt to use PEAR::XML_Wddx.

A Web Server

Apache is the recommended web server for Stratos. It has been thoroughly tested on Apache 1 and 2, and works great with both. It can be used with PHP installed as mod_php, FastCGI, or CGI (with or without suExec or suPHP). Stratos also includes rewrite rules for Apache's mod_rewrite to provide short URLs.

Other web servers should work just as well, but Stratos has not been tested extensively on anything other than Apache. If you set it up on another server, we'd love to hear how it works out.

Database

If you want to use the StratosData plugin for database access, you will need a database server. Stratos works with any database supported by PEAR::DB or PEAR::MDB2, and has been heavily tested with MySQL, SQLite, and Oracle.

PEAR Packages

Note: You will probably not need to be concerned with PEAR dependencies. They are included in both the packaged releases available on SourceForge and in the Subversion repository. If you do not want to use the packaged version of PEAR (found at stratos/includes/PEAR), simply delete it and Stratos will look for it in the include path.

Required PEAR Packages

These PEAR packages must be installed for Stratos to function.

• PEAR: Stratos uses PEAR's error handling features, so PEAR itself must be installed.
• Log: PEAR::Log is used internally, regardless of whether your application uses the Logger plugin.

Optional PEAR Packages

The following PEAR packages are optional, but are strongly recommended.

• Cache_Lite: Stratos's disk-based cache driver uses this package. Without it, disk-based caching will not be available.
• DB or MDB2: The StratosData plugin requires either PEAR::DB or PEAR::MDB2 to access relational databases.
• Services_JSON: This package is used by the Ajax features of Stratos only if the json extension is not available.
• XML_Wddx: This package is used by the Ajax features of Stratos only if the wddx extension is not available.