Zend-PHP Conference
Stephen O'Grady, analyst for RedMonk, argues that the trend in web technology, as well as other products, is gearing toward simplicity. Clients often demand more features and functionality, but successful products continue to be characterized by simplicity in design and simplicity in function. O'Grady argues that PHP is a language that inherently supports simplicity in coding creating simpler, lighter programs with less code.
Tracking the chicken-vs.-egg debate through the past, the present, and the future of Web services, Adam Bosworth offers some insight about the success of your next online application. A VP of engineering at Google, Adam explains why community comes before content, and that successful web applications follow shortly thereafter. He speculates on how future Web applications will transform industries like health care into enterprises that may not be recognizable by today's standards.
PHP is progressing from the typical small- and medium-sized business project to the enterprise. Panelists discuss the reasons why companies like PayPal, Filemaker and StepUp Commerce are choosing PHP for in-house and customer application development. The recurring theme throughout is time to market. The true value in using PHP is the speed with which a solution can be created and released. Development time is reduced to a fraction of what is required by the more complex, proprietary development platforms such as Java/JSP and .Net.
PHP developers are often confronted with performance, scalability and security. Zend Platform was released in response to developer concerns allowing them to manage high-performance, robust PHP deployments. Zend has spent the intervening time improving the product. At the Zend/PHP Conference & Expo 2005, Zeev Suraski, Zend co-founder and co-architect of PHP, details the latest capabilities of Zend Platform and provides tips on how to best take advantage of the product.
Oracle's business mindset is shifting. The enterprise computing world currently depends on large groups of isolated hardware, which waste valuable resources which could be pooled and shared. Oracle is moving towards allocation of computer resources on demand via grid computing. Ken Jacobs, VP of product strategy, explains how Oracle has begun to implement grid computing and thereby has led open source and PHP into the enterprise.
As a co-founder of Netscape and co-author of Mosaic, Marc Andreessen
has a unique view of the development of web programming. In his
keynote address, he briefly reviews the history of the computer
industry and how programming has moved from being machine dependent
and complicated to become a dynamic and easy-to-learn process. In
combination with the meteoric drop in hardware and network costs,
more powerful applications are becoming much easier to develop
through worldwide collaboration.
In his keynote address at the 2005 Zend/PHP Conference, Jon Bork relates what have been driving forces for innovation in manufacturing over the past 200 years, and draws parallels to how the same may apply to open source. Bork discusses Intel's view of the open source movement, as a valuable aspect of the computing industry. By working with and fostering innovation within the open source community, Intel sees tremendous opportunity for the future.
Next generation web applications will be built by business owners, managers, and users who do not consider themselves to be software developers. IBM's Rod Smith explains how technically savvy users can "scratch their own itch," using technologies, such as PHP and wikis, to develop their own business applications.
PHP, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2005, has surpassed ASP to become the most popular Web scripting language. Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, key contributors to PHP, are two of the founders of Zend Technologies, which provides PHP-focused products and services. This opening session from the 2005 Zend/PHP Conference details the growth of PHP in business.
