Using C++ for backend calculations in a web app

Question

I'm running a PHP front end to an application that does a lot of work with data and uses Cassandra as a data store.

However I know PHP will not give me the performance I need for some of the calculations (as well as the management for the sheer amount of data that needs to be in memory)

I'd like to write the backed stuff in C++ and access it from the PHP application. I'm trying to figure out the best way to interface the two.

Some options I've looked at:

1. Thrift (A natural choice since I'm already using it for Cassandra)
2. Google's Protocol Buffers
3. gSOAP
4. Apache Axis

The above are only things I looked at, I'm not limiting myself.

The data being transferred to the PHP application is very small, so streaming is not required. Only results of calculations are transferred.

What do you guys think?

Answer 1

If I were you I'd use thrift, no sense pulling in another RPC framework. Go with what you have and already know. Thrift makes it so easy (so does google protocol buffers, but you don't really need two different mechanisms)