Zend Framework

This preview release showcases many of the new features that will be available in the upcoming stable release:

• Zend_Rest_Route, Zend_Rest_Controller, and Zend_Controller_Plugin_PutHandler, which aid in providing RESTful resources via the MVC layer.
• Zend_Feed_Reader, which provides a common API to RSS and Atom feeds, as well as extensions to each format, caching, and a slew of other functionality.
• Zend_Queue and Zend_Service_Amazon_Sqs, which provide the ability to use local and remote messaging and queue services for offloading asynchronous processes.
• Zend_Db_Table updates to allow using Zend_Db_Table as a concrete class by passing it one or more table definitions via the constructor.
• Annotation processing support for Zend_Pdf, as well as performance improvements.
• Zend_Dojo custom build layer support.
• Numerous Zend_Ldap improvements.
• Zend_Log_Writer_Syslog, a Zend_Log writer for writing to your system log.
• Several new view helpers, including Zend_View_Helper_BaseUrl.

The 1.9.0 release is shaping up quickly, and we expect to launch a beta late next week, with a stable release a week or so later.

Again, this is a preview release; do not use it in production environments. Do, however, test it thoroughly and let us know what is and is not working for you so we can deliver a solid release with 1.9.0

The Zend Framework team announces the immediate availability of version 1.8.4pl1:

This patch-level version corrects a missing patch for Zend_Loader_PluginLoader that provided some critical functionality for Zend_Amf users. If you utilize that component, you are encouraged to upgrade immediately; for all other uses, the release tarball remains the same as the 1.8.4 version, and upgrading is left to your discretion.

Look for an announcement of a preview release or beta of 1.9.0 in the coming weeks. We have confirmation of many exciting new features, including the long awaited Zend_Queue and Zend_Feed_Reader components

The long-awaited new release of Zend Studio is around the corner, and it brings a host of new features and enhancements:

• Support for the new PHP 5.3
• Enhanced code editing - refactoring, semantic analysis,
   mark occurrences, and more
• Quick & easy debugging – detection and diagnosis of
   problems with Zend Server integration
• Enhanced Zend Framework integration – code generation
   with Zend_Tool, and more
• Better performance

Zend Server, the new PHP server that was just released last month, is now out with its new 4.0.2 release.  The new release is bug fix and feature update release. Zend claims to have fixed over 80 bugs with 4.0.2. It also marks the debut of the first generally available release of Zend Server Community Edition (CE)for Apple Macs.

To date, Zend Server CE has been only generally available for Linux and Windows but now Zend is aiming to include Mac (which had been in a longer release candidate stage) to be synchronized alongside the other operating system releases.

Another noteworthy update to Zend Server is the inclusion of Zend Framework 1.8 which was just released last week. Together with Zend Server the new Framework release takes advantage of the servers caching features which should help to improve PHP performance for users.

The open source stack ecosystem is not a slow moving one, so it's great to see that Zend is keep pace with regular and rapid updates to Zend Server.