As PHP performs badly, another approach is required Extensions are hard to write You can only write extensions in C Who here has tried to write an extension, or considered it? There are plenty of extensions, so plenty of examples There are also extensions in C++ (SDO, SCA, Colorer...) Extensions are hard to use, as you need to recompile PHP Shared objects, even closed source exist (Zend, ioncube) Documentation is hard to find