Zend Framework 1.11 Ships

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At the annual ZendCon 2010 in Santa Clara, CA today, Zend Technologies announced general availability of Zend Framework 1.11, the latest release of its PHP application framework. This adds support for mobile application development and includes the open source Simple Cloud API, which allows PHP developers to build portable cloud applications.

The Zend Framework is a PHP application framework with more than 15 million downloads and over 500 contributors, including Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Adobe and Google.

According to Zend's announcement, Zend Framework 1.11 gives developers access to the first deliverables for the Simple Cloud API project, including:

  • Document Service integration, which allows developers to utilize a variety of NoSQL cloud storage solutions including Amazon SimpleDB and Microsoft Windows Azure Table storage.
  • Queue Service integration, which lets developers perform asynchronous operations in order to offload heavy-lifting, pre-cache pages, and more. Queue Service integrations include Amazon Simple Queue System (SQS), Microsoft Windows Azure Queue service, and all adapters supported by the Zend Framework Zend_Queue component.
  • Storage Service integration, which allows developers to push static resources such as images and archives to the cloud. Currently supported services include Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Microsoft Windows Azure Blog storage, and Nirvanix.

Windows Azure access from the Simple Cloud API is made possible by the Windows Azure SDK for PHP, a project sponsored by Microsoft and developed by RealDolmen. This is yet another example of Microsoft's continuous commitment to the openness of Windows Azure Platform by working with larger open source community.

For its part, Microsoft is pleased to see the role this project is playing in "driving adoption among PHP developers for cloud computing platforms, and hope that many of these developers will be encouraged to use Windows Azure," says Jean Paoli, General Manager of Interoperability Strategy at Microsoft Corp.

"The Simple Cloud API is an important catalyst for open and interoperable cloud computing, and Microsoft has an ongoing investment in the Simple Cloud API project, together with Zend and other contributors," Paoli says.

The new mobile device support in Zend Framework 1.11 provides functionality for detecting mobile device types and their capabilities. Developers can choose from the  WURFL database, TeraWurfl, or DeviceAtlas to retrieve device capabilities, or they can write their own classes to leverage additional device databases.

Zend Framework 1.11 mobile support also includes the Dojo Toolkit 1.5 update, which includes the dojox.mobile subproject. This delivers a flexible, lightweight mobile application framework, including CSS3 and JavaScript widgets optimized for use on mobile devices and for mobile-specific contexts.