Zend Framework Introduction

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Zend Framework
The leading open-source PHP framework has a flexible architecture that lets you easily build modern web applications and web services.

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Why Zend Framework?
Extending the art & spirit of PHP, Zend Framework is based on simplicity, object-oriented best practices, corporate friendly licensing, and a rigorously tested agile codebase. Zend Framework is focused on building more secure, reliable, and modern Web 2.0 applications & web services, and consuming widely available APIs from leading vendors like Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, Flickr, as well as API providers and cataloguers like StrikeIron and ProgrammableWeb.

Expanding on these core themes, we have implemented Zend Framework to embody extreme simplicity & productivity, the latest Web 2.0 features, simple corporate-friendly licensing, and an agile well-tested code base that your enterprise can depend upon.
Extreme Simplicity & Productivity

We designed Zend Framework with simplicity in mind. To provide a lightweight, loosely-coupled component library simplified to provide 4/5s of the functionality everyone needs and that lets you customize the other 20% to meet your specific business needs. By focusing on the most commonly needed functionality, we retain the simplified spirit of PHP programming, dramatically lower the learning curve, and your training costs – so developers get up-to-speed quickly. We do this with:

* An extensible and well-tested code base – easy to augment
* A flexible architecture – not locked-in to a rigid application structure
* No configuration files necessary to get up and running – or when maintaining and deploying your apps


Frameworks and best practices mean reduced training costs and quicker time-to-market – important factors in adoption decisions. Built so you can pick and choose just the pieces you need to turbocharge your web applications – all your developers know where to find their PHP / Zend Framework code, speeding new development and reducing maintenance costs.
Latest Web Development Features

* AJAX support through JSON – meet the ease-of-use requirements your users have come to expect
* Search – a native PHP edition of the industry-standard Lucene search engine
* Syndication – the data formats & easy access to them your Web 2.0 applications need
* Web Services – Zend Framework aims to be the premier place to consume & publish web services
* High-quality, object-oriented PHP 5 class library – attention to best practices like design patterns, unit testing, & loose coupling


Friendly & Simple Licensing, Safe for the Enterprise

Based on the simple and safe new BSD license, with Zend Framework's License, you rest assured that your code is compliant, unimpeachable, and protected as you see fit. We also require all contributors to the open source Zend Framework to complete and sign a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) — which is based on the standard open-source Apache license — protecting your own intellectual property (that is, your added-value) built on Zend Framework.
Fully Tested – Extend Safely and Easily

Tested. Thoroughly. Enterprise-ready and built with agile methods, Zend Framework has been unit-tested from the start, with stringent code coverage requirements to ensure that all code contributed has not only been thoroughly unit-tested, but also remains stable and easy for you to extend, re-test with your extensions, and further maintain.

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Model-View-Controller (MVC)

* Zend_Controller, Zend_Controller_Action, Zend_Controller_Dispatcher, Zend_Controller_Plugin, Zend_Controller_RewriteRouter, Zend_View
* Zend_Http_Request, Zend_Http_Response


The above components make use of the industry standard web application design pattern MVC (which originated with one of the first scripting languages ever built, Smalltalk), and allows developers and web designers to separate their concerns and skills, making code implementation and design easily and clearly separated. No more confusion or needing both skill sets in one person.

Database

* Zend_Db
* Zend_Db_Table


Again using standard database programming best practices, data adapters for all major databases abstract away the details, so you can build your application (domain of your business) models on whatever database engine you need.

Internationalization (i18n) and Localization (l10n)

* Zend_Date
* Zend_Locale
* Zend_Measure
* Zend_Translate


In an increasingly global economy, localizing your application for a particular language and culture is imperative, not an afterthought. Do that easily, whenever you're ready to expand your markets, with Zend Framework's support for internationalization (i18n).

Authentication, Authorization, and Session management

* Zend_Acl
* Zend_Authentication
* Zend_Session


Virtually all web applications have some user-specific data that must be customized, and usually, protected from access by other users. Accomplish this quickly and easily with the above features of Zend Framework.

Web and Web Services

* Consuming services: Zend_Feed, Zend_Rest_Client, Zend_Service, Zend_XmlRpc_Client, Zend_Gdata, Zend_Http_Client
* Exposing services: Zend_Http_Server, Zend_Rest_Server, Zend_Server_Documentor, Zend_Server_Reflection, Zend_Soap_Server, Zend_XmlRpc_Server
* Zend_Uri


Web services are an integral part of Zend Framework and we intend for Zend Framework to be the nexus for and entire eco-system of Web Services and APIs providers. We currently have partnered with Google, Microsoft, and StrikeIron and they have built support for their services into Zend Framework. More are coming soon.

Mail, Formats, and Search

* Zend_Json, Zend_Pdf
* Zend_Mail, Zend_Mime
* Zend_Search_Lucene


Web 2.0 applications require support for Ajax, PDF generation, e-mail communication, and search, all an increasingly important part of web applications today. Zend Framework simplifies a developers life and gives you built-in support for these essential, if not critical, features for your application.

Core Infrastructure

* Zend_Cache, Zend_Config, Zend_Console_Getopt, Zend_Log, Zend_Memory
* Zend_Debug, Zend_Environment, Zend_Loader, Zend_Registry, Zend_Version
* Zend_Filter, Zend_Validate


Zend Framework is a broad library of loosely-coupled, yet highly cohesive pieces that support many of the other features you might need for a web application. From logging for tracking and debugging your application in production, caching for high performance, filtering for more secure and safe applications, to all the other little pieces that make a web application developer's life easy, Zend Framework provides all this, plus a vast community, a company standing behind and sponsoring development, and a large number of talented developers who know how to build Zend Framework applications from the ground up.

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Adooda

adooda.co.uk was founded by Michael Tuckwell and earlier this year he hired a small team to begin building his platform. He wanted to get to market in a matter of months.

Tuckwell explains, "Fees were always increasing [for online sales] and it was never clear at the outset how many there were or how much they cost. Listing fees, final sale fees, and many others really added up."

The Adooda team chose Zend Framework and PHP 5 to do so and have delivered above and beyond what Tuckwell imagined was possible for making his idea into an operating web site and business.

"We can easily set up our own templates now and just hand them off to our designer, which means our designer doesn't specifically need to know the ins and outs of Zend Framework, and they can get on with what they do best, which is designing the site." -- Colin Seamans, Senior Developer, Adooda

Click to download this case study and read more about how Zend Framework's MVC, XML support, templates, web services, i18n support and more, meant Adooda could get to market in record time.


bwin Games AB

bwin Interactive AG's subsidiary bwin Games AB based in Stockholm, has completely re-architected their site PokerRoom.com using PHP 5 and Zend Framework.

The bwin Games team makes extensive use of the model-view-controller (MVC) industry-standard for designing web applications. Their multi-tier design uses Zend Framework's MVC implementation, is based on best practices including coding guidelines, and ensures separation of concerns using layers that communicate between the different logical parts of their application. This means their front-end designers can work independently and efficiently in conjunction with server-side PHP developers, meaning everyone saves time, stays in their own areas of expertise, and achieves greater productivity overall.

bwin Games AB, a subsidiary of bwin Interactive Entertainment AG, is a world leader in digital entertainment with a focus on poker and other online gaming. They develop and market everything from stand-alone products, to turnkey solutions in poker, and casino games for digital media. The company owns one of the world's most popular poker networks, Ongame Network, with around 12 million registered players and have several gaming sites, including PokerRoom.com. The bwin Group is the largest publicly traded gaming company in the world that exclusively markets to the gaming public at large.

To read how Zend Framework made bwin Games' re-write possible, including how they have added extensive support for localization and foreign languages and have used Zend Framework's MVC front-controller routing features for SEO (search engine optimization), download this case study.


IBM Software Group

IBM Research & Development Labs' Emerging Internet Technologies, led by CTO David Boloker, has chosen Zend Framework to build and deliver their ambitious QEDWiki project on.

The QEDWiki browser-based assembly canvas lets business users build mash-ups and situational applications from their own data sources and to design UI and business logic components onscreen. It has been engineered by IBM using many Zend Framework components.

QEDWiki, which allows line of business professionals to assemble mash-ups from disparate web services and other sources on demand, uses Zend Framework to provide Ajax responsiveness and Web Services data to & from QEDWiki, as well as support a number of database adapters that allow QEDWiki users to collect data directly from their enterprise data sources. "From the start we have embraced and contributed to the Zend Framework project, and are very excited to deliver our product based on the release of Zend Framework 1.0" said David Boloker, CTO for Emerging Internet Technologies, IBM Software Group.

David Boloker is a Distinguished Engineer and Chief Technical Officer for Emerging Internet Technologies in IBM Software Group. He is recognized in and outside IBM as a technical leader in the Internet software space, guiding IBM's investments, as well as internal product development. His responsibilities include building IBM's technical Internet strategy, working with IBM employees to develop appropriate products for the Internet space, researching new areas in software design, as well as guiding a group of researchers.

To learn more about how Zend Framework made IBM's QEDWiki project possible, download this case study.


Right Media

In 2005 Right Media launched the Right Media Exchange, in which advertisers and publishers buy and sell online ad placements in real time through auctions, with Right Media’s optimization technology predicting where the ads will work best.

Today in 2007, Right Media serves 4 to 5 billion ads per day and at times processes over 100,000 requests/second. They have a network of 19,000 advertisers and publishers that access the platform to enter, update, confirm, and place advertisements. However, with the success of the Exchange came some problems.

At first Right Media provided their customers a Windows-based desktop application to let users post ads, create inventory, bid, and sell on the auction, track results, etc. But that solution turned out to be unworkable because the product was hard to maintain, and the team was overwhelmed by support issues and customers’ resistance to frequent updates that were needed to add new and improved functionality.

Download this case study to find out how using Zend Framework and PHP helped Right Media develop an easy to use, rich web application that solved these problems and could be used by all their customers.


Varien

In business since 2001, Varien has been building e-commerce solutions for major clients for over half the lifetime of significant e-commerce on the web.

The Magento open-source e-commerce engine that Varien has developed uses PHP 5 and Zend Framework because of the large open-source ecosystem that supports and enhances their investment in Zend Framework.

"We considered Java & Struts, and had many discussions among our team on which technology to use for Magento (our new e-commerce engine), but once we knew Zend was behind the open-source Zend Framework, encapsulating and supporting the features we needed for our large corporate and enterprise clients, we immediately chose Zend Framework. We're extremely happy with our decision," said Roy Rubin, CEO at Varien.

Find out how Zend Framework made Varien's Magento e-commerce engine possible: Download this case study and discover how Zend Framework's community support, object-oriented library of pre-built code, a flexible architecture, corporate friendly licensing, and a clear roadmap for the future made the decision to go with Zend Framework one that "really reduce[s] our development time and [lets us] better service our clients."

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Zend Framework Roadmap

Zend Framework delivers significant value to developers seeking to build business-critical Web applications. By embracing a design philosophy focused on ease-of-use and simplicity we enable building applications efficiently and with best practices. In the coming months we will continue to collaborate with the community & partners on expanding the scope and the breadth of Zend Framework. Following are some areas that we plan to work on in this time frame:
Continue to expand Web Services ecosystem

Zend's goal is to make it as easy as possible for developers to access, integrate and mash-up distributed information. Web Services represent a significant and quickly growing source of information and content. We believe that having specific support for each such service in Zend Framework supports our ease-of-use goal and we therefore plan on continuing to work with Web Services providers to extend and enhance support for their services. Currently we have over a dozen Web Services in the pipeline for addition to Zend Framework.
Embrace and support digital identity management

As the Web continues to grow the need for distributed digital identity management networks and the ability to integrate with them are becoming increasingly important. In Zend Framework we plan on embracing the set of technologies associated with this trend and delivering support for many such services. The first two we will support are OpenId and CardSpace, and we will continue to reach out to other providers to build out the full set of technologies our users expect.
Provide comprehensive forms support with best practices

Forms are a centerpiece of Web applications. For the first version of Zend Framework we focused on the infrastructure necessary to implement good forms support including input data filtering and validation mechanisms and robust MVC support. The next step is to implement first class support for building, managing and validating forms. When developing forms we will concentrate on modern methodologies and technologies including Ajax.
Embrace YAML where it makes sense

YAML is a format whose popularity is growing quickly, due to its simple structure and readability. We believe this format is very much aligned with our ease-of-use goals and therefore we will embrace it where it is relevant, for example in Zend Framework's configuration and translation features. There is no one-size-fits-all format, so we will give our users a choice of formats. We will continue to support the existing formats including INI and XML support.
Development tools

Making the developers' lives easier by providing both command line and visual tooling is important to delivering ease-of-use to our user-base. We will spend a significant amount of our time to ensure we have the right tools to support our fast growing community.
Continue expanding existing and new functionality

There are certain components in Zend Framework, such as PDF support, which can still grow for years to come: providing higher level constructs for building tables, bar code support, and more. There are also various new components which have been suggested by the community, and we believe there are still many to come. We therefore expect no dull moments and will continue work on improving and expanding Zend Framework based on feedback from our users.

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Now i use Magento so i think it is better than Zend Framework but i did not try Zend framework.