This week, Zend is formally taking the wraps off the first version of its framework, which is part of the Zend Core distribution. Zend is the company that develops tooling for the popular open source PHP web scripting language, and it releases its tooling as open source as well.
 

Like most open source projects, there’s little surprise as to what’s made it into the first full production release of the Zend Framework. It includes model-view-controller (MVC) support for writing apps that separate business logic from user interface design. 

It also includes database services via an object-oriented interface that currently supports IBM DB2, MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL and SQLite. And it includes classes for publishing and consuming web services, including REST, HTTP, and XML-RPC; feeds, including ATOM, RSS, Google Data APIs; and support for a number of popular industry web services from providers like Amazon, Yahoo!, and StrikeIron.

Among the 230 contributors to the Zend framework are IBM, which has contributed content for its QEDWiki project which enables developers and non-developers to assemble Web 2.0 applications by integrating web services. Google is another contributor, developing an API for PHP clients as an alternative to Java and .NET clients.

First announced in October 2005 and pre-released in April 2006, the framework has been downloaded over a million times, by at least 300,000 unique visitors.

According to Zend cofounder Andi Guttmans, one of the next areas that Zend will work on to enhance the framework will be in the areas of internationalization and more web service support. The framework is available as open source download now, and in a few weeks, Zend will announce subscription-based support options.

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