Zend Framework (Part -1):

Zend Framework (ZF) is a framework for PHP 5 and it is based on object-oriented paradigm. It is an open-source framework under the new BSD License.  The idea of  ZF was conceptualized in the early 2005, and it was publicly announced in October 2005 at the first Zend Conference.

ZF does not follow one single pattern or paradigm, that's why it is called use-at-will framework. ZF provides components for different design patterns like MVC, Table Data Gateway, and Row Data Gateway etc. It also provides many other common requirements which are essentials for web application development.

Like other PHP stack (WAMP, XAMPP, LAMP ) Zend Technologies also provides a PHP stack called Zend Server (Community Edition-free version of Zend Server), it is optimized for running applications based on Zend framework

Requirements:

To run ZF (version 1.7.0) we need PHP 5.2.4 or later. ZF Programmer's Reference Guide strongly recommends to use PHP 5.2.3 or later for security and for other reasons. To run unit test we need PHPUnit 3.0 or later.

Features of ZF:

Features of ZF are as follows:

• Every component of ZF is fully object-oriented PHP 5 and E_STRICT compliant.
• Architecture is based on use-at-will pattern and components are loosely coupled and minimal interdependent.
• It also includes PHP based templates and extensible MVC supporting layouts.
• It supports multiple database systems like MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server.
• In ZF mbox, Maildir, POP3, IMAP4 are used to email composition and mail delivery.
• ZF supports many type of backends such as memory or a file system and in ZF flexible caching sub-system is enabled.

In the next tutorial we will study about directory structure that means how and where to place different type of files and MVC architecture.

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