Zend Promises Better Integration Between PHP and Longhorn Server, MySQL

Published: November 1, 2006

by Alex Woodie

PHP distributor Zend and Microsoft yesterday unveiled a partnership that will see the two companies engage in a technical collaboration to make PHP run better on Windows Server "Longhorn." Zend, which is holding its user conference this week, also announced an agreement with MySQL to better integrate with the open source database.

These are heady days for Zend and PHP, the easy-to-learn Web scripting language created by Zend's founders. 2006 isn't over yet, but Zeev Suraski, Zend co-CTO and co-founder, is already calling it a "landmark year for the proliferation of PHP." According to Zend's other co-CTO and co-founder, Andi Gutmans, PHP is currently being used by more than 4 million Web developers. Most of these developers use the open source version of PHP that Zend, and others, contribute to.

But Zend also sells the Zend Core line of PHP tools, as well as maintenance agreements and services, which is how it makes a living. Now, the company with the hybrid development model is hoping that widespread familiarity with PHP will trickle up into the big organizations and corporations that control the multimillion dollar IT budgets, and make PHP even more ingrained in the Web.

A key part of that acceptance is better integration with Windows. Zend says the new technical collaboration with Microsoft will "enhance the experience of running the PHP scripting language on Windows Server 2003 and the next version of Windows Server, code-named Longhorn.'" However, exactly how the two companies will achieve the "richer functionality and better integration, resulting in improved performance and increased reliability" was not fully explained.

Mark de Visser, Zend's chief marketing officer, says "improving integration with MySQL and Windows was high on our list of priorities. The improvements will be available in the first quarter of 2007, he says.

In addition to the technical collaborations with Microsoft and MySQL, Zend also announced new partnerships with IBM and Google. On the IBM front, Zend announce that an update to its Zend Core for IBM product adds support for DB2 version 9 as well as IBM's Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) database.

Meanwhile, the new Zend Framework about to be released includes the new jointly developed Zend Google Data PHP Client Library (Zend Framework is the open source version of the PHP development tool.) The new library supports Google's Data API and will make it easier to exchange data between PHP applications and Google applications, such as Google Base and Google Calendar, the company says.

Zend also announced that the PHP Eclipse project is on track for general availability in June 2007. The PHP Eclipse project, which Zend announced last year at its first user conference, will provide PHP developers with everything they need to develop PHP applications within the Eclipse framework.

Lastly, Zend announced ZendBox, a fully hosted and managed dedicated server running the latest PHP 5 technology stack, including Zend Core, Zend Framework, and Zend Platform. According to Zend, the new ZendBox offering provides a complete and easy-to-deploy solution for running business applications written in PHP.