1.4.4 Supported by Zend Technologies
An obvious but important consideration is that the Zend Framework is supported by the company Zend
Technologies. This means that the framework is unlikely to ???die??? due to inactivity of the core developers or by
lack of updating to the latest and greatest version of PHP. Zend Technologies also have the resources to
provide for the ???boring??? bits of the framework, such as documentation, which (as we all know) few developers
really like doing!
1.5 Alternative PHP frameworks
As usage of PHP is so broad, no one framework is going to suit everyone. In the PHP world there are many
other frameworks vying for your attention and all have their strengths and weaknesses. I have rather arbitrarily
picked four other frameworks which all have some traction in the community but these are by no means the
only choices. I have listed what I see as their strengths and weaknesses in Table 1.1.
Table 1.1 Key features matrix: Zend Framework, Cake, Code Igniter, Solar and Symfony
Zend Framework Cake Code Igniter Solar Symfony
Uses PHP5 to full
advantage
Yes No No Yes Yes
Prescribed directory
structure
No
(Optional
recommended
structure)
Yes Yes No Yes
Official
internationalization
support
Yes In progress for
version 1.
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