The Zend Framework is a software framework written with PHP to provide useful and reusable solutions to web development issues. PHP, or Hypertext Processer, is a widely used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML. The Zend Framework (wikipedia link) uses object oriented codes to create web applications.
The Zend Framework has been developed in a unique way, making each component function almost independently of each other, letting the developers to individually use the components they wish to. Despite being able to use each component separately, in the standard library, the components are a very powerful web application framework that is extensible. The list of components is quite expansive and diverse and covers most aspects of web development. The forms component of the Zend Framework offers implementation of HTML form rendering, validation and filtering, so that the developers can combine and use the components using a simple interface. The framework is object oriented, and requires unit tests for the developing. The Framework is simple, and focuses on the best practices for developing modern web applications. The framework focuses on a model-view-controller that gives high performance, and the database abstraction is easy to use. In the words of developer Gary Kunard:
The Zend Framework is free for development and distribution. It has collection of Class Library and is ready to use, and provides a complete documentation. The framework had been made in such a way that it can be modified to suit the needs of the developer, and it does not involve complex XML configuration. The Zend Framework has been designed to support a multiple of database systems and vendors, such as MySQL, Oracle and IBM. The framework offers email composition, delivery and retrieval through mbox, Maildir, POP3 and IMAP4.
The Zend Framework is a framework that is flexible, and stable, which allows developers to plug and play different components of the framework to get the task done. While few of the developers may complain that the framework is slow, load balancers, clusters of servers, slaved DB servers, etc. can help make Zend run at an acceptable speed. Aiming to better the PHP ecosystem, the Framework is a good choice for web application developers.
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