Zend Founder: Not in a hurry to upgrade to PHP 6

Zend is one of many open source success stories that follow patterns that have proven successful in MySQL and subversion, providing technical support and commercial software for enterprise customers who need high-reliability, highly scalable Web application servers.

Previously, the company had announced the launch of the Zend Server Software, a highly integrated platform for running PHP applications on a single server to three servers. It includes a high-speed code caching feature that allows PHP applications to run faster. It also monitors all PHP scripts on the user's server, alerting users when they run slowly or in error.

Now, Zend is introducing a streamlined free version of its enterprise software, in the Zend Server Community Edition, users can get the same high-performance code execution and management interface, but will not receive technical support, and when the PHP update is released, it will not get an instant upgrade. However, users can at least use their powerful features to easily save expensive hardware upgrade costs.

Zend founder Ziff Sulaski (Zeev Suraski) recently received a media interview about the relationship between the Zend server community and its non-free version, and why its team took so long to develop PHP 6.

journalist : What are the similarities and differences between Zend server and the existing Zend platform software?

Sulaski : At the beginning, we plan to operate the two products simultaneously, with Zend server for a single-server solution, up to two or three servers, and the Zend platform for large clustered environments. We decided to gradually roll out the Zend Server strategy, so in the future we plan to add cluster support on Zend Server and add additional functionality and functionality to the Zend platform.

interviewer : In other words, is your plan to add the functionality of the Zend platform to Zend Server?

Sulaski : Yes, but not only does it add functionality from the Zend platform, we'll also improve its user interface and ease of use, so you won't see the exact same features in the clustered version of Zend Server in the future, but rather their improved version, or higher performance, or new features.

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 manner. But users already have MySQL and Apache, do you really need Zend Server?

Sulaski : It depends on what operating system you use. If you install it on a Linux system that already 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 comes with PHP?

Sulaski : No. The user must use PHP in Zend Server. Technically, you may be able to do this, but we do not recommend it and do not support it.

reporter : Zend server's monitoring agent automatically tracks scripts, database connections, or other PHP-related problems in the wrong time, it can save the application state, so you can restore later. Does this require a lot of resources?

Sulaski : If the user's application is really poor, then 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, about 1% to 2%. It depends on the number of events that are generated.

reporter : Is it possible to say that Zend is entering an area formerly dominated by Java application servers?

Sulaski : In a way, I think so. In fact, it is already a fact in some respects. PHP has been used in many key business applications and has been deployed in a very wide range of areas such as Kunming National Defense Road Hospital, Wikipedia, YouTube, and Flickr. This trend is growing, and we think it makes sense and supports it in 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'm going to point out that PHP has evolved from 12 to 13, and it's no longer a novice language. That said, 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 and it is very powerful and still growing.

The key advantage of PHP is that it is a proven solution, which has proven to be true. There are relatively few people who know how to deploy Web sites using Ruby or Python, and they are a great solution, but their communities are much smaller than the PHP community. Of course, the Web server industry has space to accommodate multiple products, and I don't think PHP will be used by all sites.

reporter : Can it be said that the community's open source products are affecting the Zend server free version of the features? For example, I think PHP 6 will contain an optional code cache standard, will you launch the corresponding version?

Sulaski : This is one of the features we 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, the user can easily install it, and if the user is concerned about PHP 6, it will be found that it will not be enabled by default. If people really like APC, you can disable the Zend Optimizer plug-in and then use APC, except that a small portion of the user interface is Zend Exclusive, the others are exactly the same.

reporter : PHP 6 's development time seems to be too long. Given the Perl 6 scenario, is the number 6 a curse? Or is it just part of the plan?

Sulaski : Maybe, but I think PHP 6 will be available 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 large, and the second is that every minor compatibility failure can be a nightmare for many people. And because PHP 6 will introduce support for native Unicode, there will inevitably be a lot of compatibility failures for that language. Frankly speaking, I don't know what the end result will be.

reporter : How difficult is it to move from PHP 5 to PHP 6 compared to PHP 4, to PHP 5?

Sulaski : The migration from version 4 to version 5 was quite successful and took only a few years, but today's PHP 5 is more popular than the original PHP 4. We decided not to rush to upgrade, so we are now more concerned about PHP 5.3.

We decided to add some of the new features that were originally planned for PHP 6 in PHP 5.3, such as the name Kunming Defense Road Hospital space, so we don't have to rush to upgrade to PHP 6. PHP 6 may take some time to launch.