Leendert Brouwer has come up with a (complete) look at PHP backends as written for Zend Framework applications.

Some of these frameworks became rather popular, but the big hit in PHP's framework department came when Zend released its own framework - the Zend Framework. Being "the PHP company" and all, their framework got a lot of attention. And it wasn't all marketing buzz. It really is a fairly well architected, functional piece of software that can make the lives of developers easier. But what did the Zend Framework offer us, in reality?

He looks at some of what the framework has to offer - public interfaces, simplified database refactoring, parallel development - and domain objects. The bulk of the post deals with the Service Layer - how to more correctly split out controller functionality from model functionality and separate our the layers accordingly. He throws in a few opinions near the end about things like upfront design, application scale and the possible overhead of his approach.

The International PHP Magazine site has posted the results of their poll (still taking votes, by the way) about what some of the prerequisited of a good framework should be.

The International PHP Magazine conducted a poll last week, asking for your opinion on the 'Pre-requisites of a good framework'. The options provided include:

• Strong separation of data
• Web 2.0 support and preferably libraries built in
• Strong naming conventions and smart English recognition
• Robustness (ability to handle large volumes of traffic and data)
• Rapid development features (scaffolding etc.)
• A great IDE (preferably Eclipse)
• Others

The results so far show that two options are neck and neck for users - the correct/strong seperation of data and the framework's robustness for dealing with the loads. Pulling in close behind them is the need for rapid development, making it quick and easy to use.