The PHP language heats up again

IBM has teamed up with a little-known open-source scripting language Company, Zend Technologies Ltd., in a bet that such a N Alliance would yield a easier way to build WEB sites with dynamic content.

WEB sites capable of providing users with personalized content or answering individual browser requests for specific infor Mation need to is able to extract the desired information from a database. In the early's Web, that meant laborious programming. Zend Technologies ' PHP scripting language is designed to help programmers without advanced Java or Microsoft C # expertise Build applications this tap into those database services.

PHP got its start as Personal home Page, the a Easy-to-learn scripting language for marshalling a Web site. Scripting languages typically tie diverse elements of a site together, even though May is they with built different Logies.

Initially, PHP is very much a grassroots endeavor. It is used by Web masters that didn ' t have a computer science degree, "notes Pamela Roussos, VP of marketing at Zend Tech Nologies. But that picture has changed. PHP has proven so useful, particularly in aligning database services to WEB site application needs, which it has found its Way onto many corporate sites. "Lufthansa uses PHP for its E-ticket site," notes David Boloker, chief technology officer for emerging Technologies in IBM ' s Software Group.

IBM would integrate its Easy-to-use Cloudscape database system with Zend ' s PHP. IBM is going to package the Open-source version of Cloudscape, which developers embed into WEB site systems, with the PHP SC Ripting engine from Zend technologies. The product is called Zend Core for IBM and would be available for free download in the second quarter from IBM ' s Deve Loperworks Web site, a resource site for software developers. It would also be available through IBM ' s DB2 and Cloudscape Web sites.

IBM donated the Cloudscape source code to the Apache Software Foundation last year and the version of Cloudscape bundled W ITH Zend Core for IBM would be the Apache version, known as Derby. IBM continues to produce commercial products with Cloudscape as.

"IBM ' move are going to attract more enterprise customers," says a ebullient Doron, CEO of Gerstel 68-employee Ologies, a Israeli company. IBM ' s seal of approval on PHP to do for PHP what it did for Linux (News-web sites) Eight years it ago--make it a dominant Open-source Technology accepted by commercial business, Gerstel says.

Although IBM would offer Zend Core for IBM-for-free, the software ' code itself'll not being open source and would be subject To use restrictions because it'll include drivers for IBM ' s DB2 commercial database system.