Zend Founder interview: No rush to upgrade to PHP 6

Zend Founder interview: No rush to upgrade to PHP 6
Http://tech.it168.com/focus/200904/oracle-sun/index.html
IT168
Zend is one of many open source success stories that follows the proven success of MySQL and subversion, providing technical support and business software for enterprise customers who need highly reliable, highly scalable Web application servers.
Previously, the company had announced the launch of Zend Server Software, a highly integrated platform for running PHP applications on one to three servers. It contains a high-speed code caching feature that allows PHP applications to run more quickly. It also monitors all PHP scripts on the user's server, alerting the user when it is running slowly or in error.
Now, Zend is launching a streamlined, free version of its enterprise software, in the Zend Server Community Edition, where users get the same high-performance code execution and management interface, without technical support, and no immediate upgrades when PHP updates are released. Even so, users can at least use their powerful features to easily save expensive hardware upgrades.
Zend founder Jiff Sulaski (Zeev Suraski) recently interviewed the media about the Zend Server Community Edition and its non-free version, and why the team spent so much time developing PHP 6.
Reporter: Zend server and the existing Zend platform software similarities and differences?
Sulaski: At the beginning, we plan to run the two products at the same time, where Zend server is for a single server solution, up to two or three servers, and Zend platform for large cluster environments. We decided to gradually launch the Zend server strategy, so in the future we plan to add cluster support on Zend Server and add additional features and new features on the Zend platform.
Journalist: That is, your plan is to add the Zend platform functionality to the Zend server?
Sulaski: Yes, but not only does it add functionality from the Zend platform, but we will also improve its user interface and ease of use, so that in the future you will not see exactly the same functionality in the cluster version of Zend Server, but rather their improved version, either with higher performance or new functionality.
Journalist: One of the key features of Zend server is that it is a highly integrated solution with software that is configured to run in a more optimized way. But users already have MySQL and Apache, do they really need Zend Server?
Sulaski: It depends on what operating system you use. If you install it on a Linux system that has Apache installed, you don't need to install a new Apache, just use the system's own Apache. But if you use other systems, you can install Apache via Zend Server, which is very handy.
Reporter: Can users use the system's own PHP?
Sulaski: No. The user must use PHP in Zend Server. From a technical point of view, you may be able to do so, but we do not recommend it and do not support it.
Reporter: Zend server's monitoring agent automatically tracks the time that a script, database connection, or other PHP-related problem occurs, it can save application state, so it can be recovered later. Does this require a lot of resources?
Sulaski: If the user's application is really bad, it generates a lot of these events, and it does take a lot of time to save them. In general, however, the user's application does not produce too many of these events, and its resource overhead is almost negligible, somewhere between 1% and 2%. It depends on the number of events generated.
Journalist: Is it possible to say that Zend is entering a domain previously governed by the Java application Server?
Sulaski: In a way, I think so. In fact, in some ways it is already a fact. PHP has been used in many key business applications and has been deployed in a wide range of areas such as Wikipedia, YouTube, and Flickr. This trend is still growing, and we think it makes sense and supports it in the Zend server.
Reporter: On the other hand, as Zend Server makes PHP more enterprise-oriented, is it possible to say that PHP may be losing contact with its original community?
Sulaski: I don't think so, but I want to point out that PHP has developed from 12 to 13, it is no longer a novice language. In other words, I think the PHP community is still developing it and is still in close contact with the communities that use it. The PHP community is very healthy, it's very strong and still growing.
The key advantage of PHP is that it is a mature solution, which has been proved by the facts. There are relatively few people who know how to deploy sites in Ruby or Python, and they are very good solutions, but their communities are much smaller than the PHP community. Of course, the Web server industry has room to hold multiple products, and I don't think PHP will be used by all the sites.
Journalist: Is it possible to say that the open source products of the community are affecting the functionality of the Zend Server Free Edition? For example, I think PHP 6 will contain an optional code caching standard, will you release the corresponding version?
Sulaski: This is one of the features we've decided to add, but it's not the only feature.
The optional PHP cache (APC) will be the standard for PHP, but it will not make much difference, it is already in the PHP extension library, users can easily install it, and if the user is concerned about PHP 6, it will find that it will not be enabled by default. If people really like APC, you can disable the Zend Optimizer plug-in and use APC, except that a small subset of the user interface is Zend Exclusive.
Reporter: PHP 6 development time seems too long. Given Perl 6, is the number 6 a curse? Or just part of the plan?
Sulaski: Maybe, but I think PHP 6 will be launched before Python 6. PHP 6 is a more difficult project than PHP 4 and PHP 5, for two reasons: one is that PHP's code base is now so huge; the second is that every little compatibility failure can be a nightmare for many people. And because PHP 6 will introduce support for native Unicode, it will inevitably bring a lot of compatibility problems to the language. Frankly speaking, I don't know what the end result will be.
Journalist: How difficult is it to switch from PHP 5 to PHP 6, compared to PHP 5 from PHP 4?
Sulaski: Migration from version 4 to version 5 was quite successful and took only a few years, but today's PHP 5 is already more popular than the original PHP 4. We decided not to rush to upgrade, so we are now more interested in PHP 5.3.
We decided to add some of the new features, such as namespaces, that were originally planned for PHP 6 in PHP 5.3, so that we don't have to be in a hurry to upgrade to PHP 6. It may take some time for PHP 6 to be officially launched.