PHP 5 Release Candidate 1 released!

Source: php.net

The first release candidate of PHP 5 is finally here! The move from beta stage to RC stage means that PHP 5 is now feature complete, and is quite stable-stable enough for everyone to start playing. note that it is still not recommended for mission-critical use. Some of the key features of PHP 5 include: The Zend engine II with a new object model and dozens of new features. XML support has been completely redone in PHP 5, all extensions are now focused around the excellent libxml2 library (http://www.xmlsoft.org /). A new MySQL extension named mysqli for developers using MySQL 4.1 and later. additionally to a functional interface this new extension also includes an object-oriented interface and support for compatibility of MySQL's new features such as prepared statements. SQLite has been bundled with PHP. For more information on SQLite, please visit their website. A brand new built-in soap extension for interoperability with Web Services. A new simplexml extension for easily accessing and manipulating XML as PHP objects. It can also interface with the DOM extension and vice-versa. Streams have been greatly improved, including the ability to access low-level socket operations on streams. And lots more... For changes since beta 4, please consult the changelog.