Developing PHP Applications for IBM Data Servers

Peter Kitson

ISBN : 0738497460

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Sample Chapter From Developing PHP Applications for IBM Data Servers
     Copyright © Whei-Jen Chen, Holger Kirstein, Daniel Krook, Kiran H Nair, Piotr Pietrzak



1.6 Zend products

Zend was created by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski in 1997. Zend delivers the premier Web application platform products and services for PHP applications. Zend supports PHP by writing and maintaining the Zend Engine and other PHP extensions such as the SOAP extension. All of these works are open source and donated back to the PHP community. In commercial business, Zend brings products and services to the market to help customers develop, deploy, and manage PHP applications. Zend\'s solution supports the lifecycle of business-critical PHP applications.

Zend has a fast growing product portfolio, including:
  •  Zend Engine
  •  Zend Core
  •  Zend Platform
  •  Zend Studio
  •  Zend SafeGuard
  •  Zend Optimizer

Zend Engine

If you are using PHP, you probably also are also using Zend Engine. The Zend Engine is open-source software and available under an Apache-style license. The first version, Zend Engine 1, was introduced in 1999 alongside PHP Version 4. Zend Engine 1 is the core scripting engine of PHP, plus many additional features and platform support beyond Linux/Apache. Zend Engine 2, the current release, provides more revolutionary capabilities including its built-in robust object model.

Zend Core for IBM

Zend Core is an enhanced version of the open source PHP. Delivering out-of-the-box all the necessary drivers and third party libraries to work with the database, such as DB2, Zend core makes the software installation easier and faster with insance PHP setup. Zend Core for IBM is a fully Zend/IBM certified version of PHP for the IBM databases. The product includes tight integration with IBM database server DB2 and Cloudscape. It also provides native support for XML and Web Services. It delivers a rapid development and deployment foundation for database driven applications and offers an upgrade path from the easy-to-use, lightweight Cloudscape database to the mission critical DB2, by providing a consistent API between the two.

Product highlights are:

  •  PHP 5
  •  Easy to install
  •  Graphical Web-based Administration Console for Cloudscape servers and PHP environment
  •  Bundled IBM Cloudscape server and DB2 drivers for enterprise database Web application deployments
  •  Easy to access documentation
  •  Support options available from Zend

IBM and Zend are collaborating on development and support for the PHP environment.

This collaboration reinforces the IBM commitment to the open source community and foundations, such as Linux, Apache, Eclipse, and Derby. The IBM newly introduced and optimized DB2 and Cloudscape extension for PHP are submitted back to the PHP community and integrated into Zend Core for IBM.

This expands the IBM investment in open source by helping developers more effectively create and deploy applications. The availability of Zend Core for IBM will significantly enhance developer support for the IBM Cloudscape open-source database, since PHP is one of the most popular Web programming languages in the world. In addition, the Zend Core PHP maintenance process ensures better stability and reliability of PHP as a result of intensive testing and bug fixes that are posted back to the PHP community of users across all facets of the market.

Zend Platform

Zend Platform makes the life easier mostly for administrators in the enterprise environment. It includes enterprise management and intelligence features, easing the administration of multiple PHP servers. The Zend Central is a central management console for administrators to manage all of their PHP servers from the configuration and performance points of view.

The main features are:
 Central console:
– Delivers full exposure of all aspects of your PHP environment
 Comprehensive application insight
– Outstanding run-time profiling and performance monitoring
 Audit trail:
– Error recreation and full problem context
– Proactive alerts dispatched to relevant IT personnel
– Online debugging and immediate error fixing, as part of Zend Studio integration
 Performance boost:
– Run-time code optimization
– Code acceleration and precompilation
– Full caching solution
– Download optimization and acceleration
– Full support for PHP 4 and PHP 5
 Unmatched functionality:
– PHP session clustering
– PHP intelligence
– PHP performance management
– PHP configuration control
– PHP/Java integration bridge
 Session clustering:
– Performance boost (up to 10x)
– Locking mechanism to ensure data integrity
– Works seamlessly with existing PHP code
– Integrates with load balancers
– Linear scalability for additional machines

For more detailed information, refer to:
http://www.zend.com/products/zend_platform

Zend Studio

Zend Studio is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to provide PHP developers a complete development and testing environment. While working on the PHP script, Zend Studio provides functions for editing, debugging, analysis, and optimization. It also include a set of tools to work with various databases.

Zend Studio features include:
  •  Code folding
  •  Nested PHP code completion
  •  Subversion integration
  •  Web services support
  •  Integrated debugger
  •  Profiler

Zend Studio 5 is available in three editions: Enterprise, Professional, and Standard. For more detailed information, refer to:

http://www.zend.com/products/zend_studio

Zend Safeguard

Zend Safeguard can help provide software protection. Since PHP is an open source language, PHP application distribution faces many management issues, such as:

 Anyone can access the source code of the application and change or modify it at anytime.
 Impossible to protect against copyright infringement.
 It is almost impossible to implement an efficient licensing model because administrators or programmers can change anything.
 Impossible to secure internal process business logic. 

Zend Safeguard provides a solutions for these problems. Zend Safeguard consists of two product modules that provide software protection:

 Zend Encoder

Zend Encoder compiles and converts plain-text PHP scripts into a platform-independent binary format. Then you can distribute these encoded binary files.

 Zend License Manager

Zend License Manager provides the option to deploy license restrictions to
encoded files. You deploy the license file with the encoded PHP script and
the license file is validated at run time. License manager allows you to
implement your application across your organization, effectively licensing
policies on commercial applications. Licensing models are easy to configure
and the options are flexible.

Zend Optimizer

Zend Optimizer is a free downloadable application which allows you to run the
code encrypted by Zend Safeguard. Optimizer can also increase PHP run-time
performance.