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Zend Framework

Zend Framework is a high quality, open source framework for developing Web applications and Web services with PHP.

Built in the true PHP spirit, the Zend Framework delivers ease-of-use and powerful functionality. It provides solutions for building modern, robust and secure websites.

Zend Framework Resources

All the developer resources can be found at: http://framework.zend.com/

Why Zend Framework

(Taken from: http://framework.zend.com/whyzf/overview)

Extending the art and spirit of PHP, Zend Framework is based on simplicity: Object-oriented best practices, corporate friendly licensing and a rigorously tested agile code base. Zend Framework is focused on building more secure, reliable and modern Web 2.0 applications and Web services, and consuming widely available APIs from leading vendors like Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, and 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 and 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, while dramatically lowering the learning curve - and your training costs – so developers get up-to-speed quickly. We do this with:

Extensible and well-tested code base

Flexible architecture

No configuration files necessary to get going

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, which speeds new development and reduces 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 and easy access to them your Web 2.0 applications need

Web Services – Zend Framework aims to be the premier place to consume and publish web services

High-quality, object-oriented PHP 5 class library – attention to best practices like design patterns, unit testing and loose coupling

Friendly & Simple Licensing, Safe for the Enterprise

Based on the simple and safe new BSD license, with Zend Framework's License, you can 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 — to protect your intellectual property (that is, your added-value) built on Zend Framework.

Fully Tested – Extend Safely and Easily

Thoroughly-tested, 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.


	Related Links: Working with Zend Framework