Zend's PHP Offering Expands Options for iSeries Developers

Published: August 1, 2006

by Alex Woodie

The announcement yesterday of the general availability of Zend Technology's PHP runtime environment for IBM iSeries servers heralds the delivery of a new world of open-source development for iSeries users. With the runtime engine now available as a free download, more than 10,000 PHP programs distributed under open-source licenses become fair game for iSeries PHP developers, who can adopt the programs as-is or use them as components of a larger application.

The breadth and scale of the PHP scripting language and the PHP development community has been well-documented. There are an estimated 23 million domains using PHP, or a bit less than one-third of the Web's total domains. Evans Data estimates there are 4.6 million PHP programmers in the world--about 10 times the number of programmers using traditional iSeries tools--compared to about 6.4 million .NET programmers and 5.8 million Java programmers. However, the number of PHP programmers is growing faster than the other two languages, with about a 37 percent annual increase expected by 2007.

What does that have to do with iSeries development? you ask. The answer is simple: Web enablement. IBM has been looking for ways to get iSeries shops to build Web interfaces to their OS/400 applications for years, and PHP is Big Blue's latest, greatest solution to that problem.

To get PHP supported on the iSeries, IBM programmers worked closely with Zend Technology, the Northern California company founded by PHP's two original architects, Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans of Israel, and the company at the heart of the drive to commercialize products written in PHP. Zend needed IBM's assistance to support the nuances of DB2/400, including things like data areas and data queues, and because of that support, IBMers are now included in the list of 500 "committers" that are authorized to contribute changes or additions to the PHP language itself.

The contributions of IBM and Zend have resulted in the two products announced this week, including the basic runtime component called Zend Core for i5/OS, which has the product number 5639-ZC1, and Zend Studio Professional for i5/OS (5639-ZS1) an IDE for developing PHP applications, although they can also be written in any text editor. For more information on ordering these products or for-fee support agreements, see the article "Sundry Summer Announcements for the System i5" in a recent issue of The Four Hundred.

Thousands of iSeries shops have downloaded the PHP software since betas of the code became available in March, indicating a strong interest in the tools. Mike Pinette, Zend's vice president of business development and alliances, says the beta testers were from all walks of iSeries life.

"When we shared the list of beta testers with the IBM iSeries team, it was 30 of the top System i customers that had mainframe-class systems," Pinette says. "They weren't just your typical small developers but some of the large businesses that have been using System i for years."

Pinette says he expects iSeries shops to use PHP to write the same types of Web applications as other PHP users do. At Zend's inaugural PHP conference last year, the company surveyed attendees about their development plans, and 59 percent of them said they were developing content management systems--the most frequently mentioned of all application types. According to that survey, developers are also using PHP to build e-commerce Web sites (37 percent), content display or media application (30 percent), communications applications (24 percent), CRM systems (16 percent), security (15 percent), games (7 percent), and ERP (5 percent). "Anything you can have in traditional C++ or Java, you can have in the PHP world," he says.

However, the open-source nature of PHP makes it very different in some ways than Java and C++, which are controlled by Sun Microsystems and Microsoft respectively. Because PHP is maintained and enhanced by a community of developers and not a single entity, it brings several advantages, according to Pinette.

The first advantage is quicker response times to user requests. "If you look at RPG or COBOL, you're stuck with what the prognosticators of those languages bring to you. In PHP, your next feature or supported extension can come from any community member" Pinette says. "As opposed to the past, where you're beholden, you have Zend and the rest of the community that's making functionality available to you. If you have a two- or three-person engineering shop, you can rely on that community."

Just the same, Pinette applauds IBM for its recognition that PHP has a lot to offer the iSeries community. "In reality, this is a good validation that IBM listens to the community and listens to the clients, and tries to service its needs," he says.

While Zend is the leader of the PHP community, it's by no means the only voice. A number of Web sites, including www.phpdeveloper.org and www.i5php.net, cater to smaller groups of PHP developers.

iSeries PHP developers in particular should check out i5php.net, which offers forums and links to other PHP resources. "PHP support on i5/OS provides more freedom of choice in Web development, along with protecting our current investments and assets," said Rob Ward, the webmaster of i5php.net. "The low learning curve and high adoption rate combine to create tremendous momentum and interest in the System i community."

Another advantage of PHP's open-source development process is the collection of pre-developed PHP programs and routines that developers have contributed to the open-source community. The Web site www.hotscripts.com, for example, lists more than 10,000 PHP scripts and programs that can be freely downloaded and incorporated into any Web site. The PHP scripts posted on www.hotscripts.com--including click-through tracking, portal systems, search engines, discussion boards, e-commerce components, user authentication, and mailing list management, to name a few--should work unchanged in an iSeries PHP environment, Pinette says.

This puts a twist on the "buy or build" game most iSeries shops have played over the years. "This is a new world for the System i community in that everything doesn't have to be written from scratch," he says. "Users don't have to buy commercial off-the-shelf products. They can use PHP and other open source technologies to facilitate their business."

Support for an iSeries runtime also brings the PHP community certain advantages. "It's that dynamic we're trying to bring to the System i," Pinette says. "The System i has a large community of businesses that are do-it-yourselfers and design their own applications. We wanted to bring some of the high availability and resilience of the System i to the open source community."

Later this year, Zend will roll out additional offerings targeted at iSeries ISVs, systems integrators, and resellers. These products will include Zend Platform for i5/OS, a for-fee product that provides a high-performance deployment engine that includes things like clustering, code acceleration, monitoring, and management tools. Zend Guard for i5/OS, meanwhile, will assist those who want to distribute iSeries PHP programs, but who want to protect their intellectual property. The ship date for these products has not yet been nailed down.

Meanwhile, iSeries developers ready to see how their newfound PHP skills stack up against the community at large will be able to do so at the fall COMMON conference being held September 17 through 21 in Miami, Florida. Zend plans to offer PHP certification tests at the show.