Zend Framework Released.

There's been a lot of interest in php frameworks recently and now Zend, the guys who actually maintain php have released their take, Zend Framework.

There are a few different approaches to frameworks but they can be divided into two camps. First are full frameworks like symfony or CakePHP. These have also been called 'opinionated' in that they have strong expectations for what code goes where and encourage (force?) you to work in a specific way. I've started using Cake lately on our non-cms projects and am pretty happy with that approach. The dogmatic frameworks are especially good on a project where you have to outsource development since you know where everything will end up.

Zend's framework is more in the second camp. These frameworks, another being CodeIgniter, are more a set of classes that take care of various features in a standard way that you mix and match as needed. These can be faster and more flexible. I actually plan on using some of these Zend classes within our CMS sites since they will be easier to work into other systems. I especially think they will be a good fit on flash remoting driven projects.