eZ Systems Announces eZ Platform for PHP Application Development

CGIDir
Wednesday, June 28, 2006; 06:18 AM

eZ systems is developing an internet application environment called the “eZ platform”, which will provide an industry-grade development stack for a wide spectrum of programmers. The eZ platform will be Enterprise Open Source software based on PHP 6, consisting of a flexible suite of expandable building blocks that can be used to create a wide range of powerful enterprise applications for the internet.

Aleksander Farstad, CEO of eZ systems, announced the eZ platform during the opening session of eZ systems' annual eZ publish conference, in Skien, Norway. "We innovate for the future!", Farstad says. "With the eZ platform, everyone will benefit from our unique expertise in the field of internet application development. Users of the eZ platform will be able to reduce development costs and risks as well as enhance the quality and reduce the time-to-market of their solutions."

The eZ platform will be a modular solution that consists of independent layers with clearly defined software interaction points. It will offer a stable and flexible environment providing critical low-level functionality and tools upon which customer-specific features and integrated business network applications can be built. A highlight of the features includes:

- plugin system
- module/view system
- authorization and authentication system
- workflow system
- clustering support
- background process support
- widget system with AJAX support
- templating mechanism
- mail management
- SOA-ready Web services

Businesses using the eZ platform will benefit from a standardized and open platform that is well engineered and thoroughly tested. Furthermore, businesses can protect their investment and rely on commercial services offered by eZ systems via its Total Product Responsibility program, which includes support, services and guarantees.
The eZ platform will consist of two major layers, the eZ components and the eZ application server:

eZ components is the already-available PHP components library, developed and maintained by eZ systems. It has been available in a stable version since January 2006. Among other things, the components provide support for database abstraction, object persistence and caching.

The eZ application server is the PHP application server developed by eZ systems that will be available in December 2007. It will consist of a kernel that provides the following functionality: request handling, authentication, permission handling, workflow management, process management, package upgrades and a flexible tree engine. In addition, it provides interfaces for storage engine plugins.

All parts of the eZ platform are highly interoperable. They can easily be individually integrated into existing or new third-party PHP applications. Developers and businesses can immediately make use of each eZ platform building block as soon as it is available, without having to wait for the release of the entire platform.

The eZ platform will help developers rapidly build small and large-scale internet applications because it follows the best practices of PHP development. Developers using the eZ platform will be able to quickly build solid applications that meet customer needs and changing requirements.