As Published In September/October 2005

Oracle and Zend Team Up on PHP
By Caroline Kvitka

Free prebuilt stack provides all the pieces PHP developers need to get started.

Developing PHP applications for Oracle Database can be a tricky proposition, requiring developers to download several components and cobble them together. Until now.

Oracle has partnered with Zend Technologies of Cupertino, California, to develop an integrated offering designed to help developers build and deploy database-driven PHP-based applications for Oracle. Zend Core for Oracle, due out in the latter half of 2005, is a free prebuilt stack that will enable developers to get up and running quickly with PHP. A fully tested and supported PHP 5 distribution, it includes tight integration with Oracle Database 10g client libraries.

Currently, installing PHP with Oracle can be a time-consuming process. Developers have to download a variety of components—PHP, Apache, Linux, and the Oracle extension for PHP—install an Oracle client, and configure them together. "Configuration can lead to some unique problems in certain combinations of platform libraries and in the combination of PHP, Oracle, and Apache libraries, and that's difficult for any company to support," says Richard Rendell, product development director at Oracle.

Zend Core for Oracle aims to change that by providing all the pieces that PHP developers need to get started. "The idea is that we're building a prebuilt binary of all those technologies," says Rendell. "For example, on Linux, we have all of the Linux parts of the stack; we have Apache, we have PHP, and we have the Oracle Instant Client built into a single binary, which is configured on the platform through a basic Web browser GUI, and you're up and running in minutes."

PHP 5 supports an object-oriented programming model, includes native support for XML and Web services, and enables the development of service-oriented architectures (SOAs). "It's a great step forward for PHP developers," says Michel Gerin, vice president of marketing at Zend, whose founders are the architects of PHP. "It's the distribution of choice and is part of Zend Core. We're also including a new version of the Oracle client libraries that are being jointly developed by Oracle and Zend," he says.

Growing PHP Momentum

In a word, PHP is hot. According to research firm Netcraft in Bath, England, the open source scripting language accounts for more than 40 percent of the overall Web applications market, and more than 19 million Web sites have been built using this open source language. PHP's scalability is one reason behind its boom. Of Zend's 10,000 customers, many are building mission-critical, dynamic Web applications with PHP—and a significant percentage are running on Oracle. For example, Lufthansa uses PHP and Oracle for its e-ticketing system, Electronic Arts for The Sims Online, Boeing for payload measurement, and Oracle for its own WAP portal.

Web Locator VISIT PHP Developer Center Zend Technologies READ PHP Developer Center

Availability and Support

Zend Core for Oracle will be available as a free download on the Oracle Technology Network in the PHP Developer Center. The site features technical resources for PHP developers, including installation guides for PHP with Oracle Application Server and Oracle Database, an online forum, and the Oracle JDeveloper 10g PHP extension. Available as a free download, this extension makes it easier to develop, test, and deploy PHP applications using an Oracle JDeveloper 10g development environment. In addition, the PHP Developer Center features a multipart "DeployPHP" series, created in collaboration with Zend, which provides actionable resources to make PHP deployment on top of Oracle faster and easier.

Zend will provide commercial support and updates for Zend Core for Oracle, which is compatible with other Zend products including Zend Platform and Zend Studio.

Going forward, Oracle and Zend are focusing on strengthening high-level database integration frameworks, enhancing PHP Web services standards, improving scalability and performance, and providing seamless interoperability between PHP and Java applications.