Zend was created by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski in 1997. Zend delivers the premier Web
application platform products and services for PHP applications. Zend supports PHP by writing
and maintaining the Zend Engine and other PHP extensions such as the SOAP extension. All of
these works are open source and donated back to the PHP community. In commercial business,
Zend brings products and services to the market to help customers develop, deploy, and manage
PHP applications. Zend's solution supports the lifecycle of business-critical PHP applications.
Zend has a fast growing product portfolio, including:
- Zend Engine
- Zend Core
- Zend Platform
- Zend Studio
- Zend SafeGuard
- Zend Optimizer
open-source software and available under an Apache-style license. The first version, Zend
Engine 1, was introduced in 1999 alongside PHP Version 4. Zend Engine 1 is the core scripting
engine of PHP, plus many additional features and platform support beyond Linux/Apache. Zend
Engine 2, the current release, provides more revolutionary capabilities including its built-in
robust object model.
Zend Core for IBM Zend Core is an enhanced version of the open source PHP. Delivering out-of-the-box all the
necessary drivers and third party libraries to work with the database, such as DB2, Zend core
makes the software installation easier and faster with insance PHP setup. Zend Core for IBM is a
fully Zend/IBM certified version of PHP for the IBM databases. The product includes tight
integration with IBM database server DB2 and Cloudscape. It also provides native support for
XML and Web Services. It delivers a rapid development and deployment foundation for
database driven applications and offers an upgrade path from the easy-to-use, lightweight
Cloudscape database to the mission critical DB2, by providing a consistent API between the two.
Product highlights are:
- PHP 5
- Easy to install
- Graphical Web-based Administration Console for Cloudscape servers and PHP
- environment
- Bundled IBM Cloudscape server and DB2 drivers for enterprise database Web application
- deployments
- Easy to access documentation
- Support options available from Zend
IBM and Zend are collaborating on development and support for the PHP environment.
This collaboration reinforces the IBM commitment to the open source community and
foundations, such as Linux, Apache, Eclipse, and Derby. The IBM newly introduced and
optimized DB2 and Cloudscape extension for PHP are submitted back to the PHP community
and integrated into Zend Core for IBM.
This expands the IBM investment in open source by helping developers more effectively create
and deploy applications. The availability of Zend Core for IBM will significantly enhance
developer support for the IBM Cloudscape open-source database, since PHP is one of the most
popular Web programming languages in the world. In addition, the Zend Core PHP maintenance
process ensures better stability and reliability of PHP as a result of intensive testing and bug
fixes that are posted back to the PHP community of users across all facets of the market.
Zend Platform Zend Platform makes the life easier mostly for administrators in the enterprise environment. It
includes enterprise management and intelligence features, easing the administration of multiple
PHP servers. The Zend Central is a central management console for administrators to manage
all of their PHP servers from the configuration and performance points of view.
The main features are:
Central console:
– Delivers full exposure of all aspects of your PHP environment
Comprehensive application insight
– Outstanding run-time profiling and performance monitoring
Audit trail:
– Error recreation and full problem context
– Proactive alerts dispatched to relevant IT personnel
– Online debugging and immediate error fixing, as part of Zend Studio integration
Performance boost:
– Run-time code optimization
– Code acceleration and precompilation
– Full caching solution
– Download optimization and acceleration
– Full support for PHP 4 and PHP 5
Unmatched functionality:
– PHP session clustering
– PHP intelligence
– PHP performance management
– PHP configuration control
– PHP/Java integration bridge
Session clustering:
– Performance boost (up to 10x)
– Locking mechanism to ensure data integrity
– Works seamlessly with existing PHP code
– Integrates with load balancers
– Linear scalability for additional machines
For more detailed information, refer to:
http://www.zend.com/products/zend_platform
Developing PHP Applications for IBM Data Servers
