Previously, we reported on IBM and Zend working together to bring PHP to IBM's Series i machines, and today, Andi Gutamns has posted more details on the collaboration.
Although this platform might be foreign to many in the PHP community, over the past few years I have discovered quite a few who have either worked with PHP on this platform by following IBM's Redbook instructions or have installed PHP on a UNIX/Linux server and then interoperated with the i5/OS.
As part of this project we will be providing all i5/OS users Zend Core for i5/OS for free. This will very much lower the barrier of entry to get up and running with PHP. We will also be providing ways for them to access their existing code-base by creating language bridges (such as an RPG bridge), native drivers for accessing DB2/400, and various other bridges to operating system services.
He continues on to talk about how this will (positively) effect the i5/OS community, giving them an alternative to Java. He also compares the PHP community and the i5/OS community - they're both passionate about what they do and they both tend to be made up of people with no formal computer science experiences.
