Enrico Zimuel has a new post to his blog today looking at the translation of a spool file on an (IBM) i5/OS machine into a PDF file using the Zend Core for i5 from Zend.

Zend Core for i5/OS provides the i5 Toolkit for PHP, an API system to call i5 functionalities from PHP. One of the function of this API is the i5_spool that is able to manage spool files for specific i5 users. In this post I present a class to convert a spool file in PDF using the Zend_Pdf class of the Zend Framework.

He includes the quick twelve line code you'll need to get the job done. It reads in the spool file with some built-in functions and calls the "toPdf" method to export the result. There's also a few parameters you can include as a second parameter that let you define things like font size and margins.

New on the Zend Developer Zone is a tutorial showing a "Hello World" setup, configuration and testing of the Zend Core for the IBM i5 series from start to finish.

You've successfully installed the Zend Core for i5. Now what? The process of developing PHP scripts may not be obvious to System i developers familiar with RPG and COBOL. Let's take a look at the basic steps needed to start writing PHP scripts on System i.

They look at where the parts of the application are located, the steps to take to ensure it's running correctly, setting up Zend Studio and a personal development space and creating two simple scripts - one "Hello World" and the other that makes a DB2 connection to the local instance.

The Zend Developer Zone has a new article that will interest developers still looking to make the jump from PHP4 to PHP5 (you know who you are) with Informix support. Zend Core can help.

There are many business web applications written in PHP4 that use the Informix module for data access. PHP4 is no longer supported and as a result will not be issued any more fixes or releases. Since version 5.2, the Informix module is no longer available for the PDO module. In this article I'll to describe how to compile and install the Informix module on the Zend Core 2.5 (PHP 5.2.6)

The tutorial helps you set up your environment and build/install the Informix module to be plugged into the Zend Core stack. Activation is as simple as going into the Zend Core admin tool and enabling the extension. A sample script is included to test the results.

Its also noted in the comments that there's a PDO driver for Informix that can be pulled from the PECL extension repository.

As the Zend Developer Zone points out, there's a new article from Erwin Early (of the i5 community) that's a shot introduction to what the Zend Framework is and some of what it entails.

The customer interest in PHP has been high and I receive numerous questions at customer events on its usage of PHP on IBM i. Many people also ask about Zend Framework. What is Zend Framework? Can I use it on i5/OS? How can I integrate the advanced functionality that Zend Framework provides?

To answer some of these questions he gives an overview of the framework - some of the components that make it up, how to place it so that Zend Core can find it, some resources about the framework and an example os its use to make a PDF with Zend_Pdf.

Havard Eide is asking for your help in a new entry to his blog. He's looking for ways to speed up his development in Eclipse, specifically in the debugging.

There is one thing I do need over everything else: remote debugging. Having used Zend Studio for 3 years now it hasn't been the best editor ( I'd rather prefer PHPEclipse/PDT ) but the remote debugging facility is superb [...] Eclipse it has all the tools you need to develop with but the debugging is slow, way too slow!

He's looking for anyone out there that might be able to help him speed up the debugging on his Leopard-installed version of Eclipse ("So slow actually that I had to install Zend Studio 5.5 for whenever I have to debug a file...")

John Coggeshall has blogged about a method he's worked up for compiling extensions into the Zend Core software.

While Core does ship with a large list of extensions (which are all QA'd and supported by Zend) there are times when you would like to include non-official extensions from PECL for various reasons.

He breaks it down into a few simple steps - download, "phpize" the extension, compile it and add the extension to the php.ini. He details the second step of the process (the phpize) because of some of the differences there are between doing it for a normal PHP install and a Zend Core install.

He also provides directions for an exception to the rule - compiling a PDO driver for your ZC install. You'll have to trick the Zend Core installation into using the right files, though. Full instructions are included.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted the latest episode of their PHP Abstract series highlighting developers from all over the web. This time, though, it's a little different. This episode is an interview with Aviv Katz of Zend.

Today, we are going to do something a little different. While I was at ZendCon 07, I had the opportunity to sit down with fellow Zender, Aviv Katz. Aviv is the product manager of Zend Core and Zend Network. [...] Zend is a very distributed company, the downside of that however, is that a lot of us don't see each other during the course of a year. So when I was offered the opportunity to talk to Aviv I naturally jumped at it.

Cal also warns listeners ahead of time that it's more about a certain product than it is about Aviv.

The usual three methods of listening are there - right on the page, through a direct download and via the podcast's feed in your favorite aggregator.

With recent announcements from Zend, there's talk all over about what they're doing and who they're doing it with. Here's just a few examples from Zend's own news feed:

• IBM Adds Zend to Value Pak, Ships ESX Server Storage Support - a summary look at the Value Pack bundle of software for the i5/OS V5R4 operating system
• Zend Puts Out New Release of Commercial-Grade PHP - the latest release of ZendCore
• Microsoft adds PHP to InfoCard support list - the addition of InfoCard support in a collaboration with Microsoft (a big push in their Hotmail email offering and other Live online services)
• Oracle beefs up PHP driver - the updates that Oracle has made to the OCI8 driver for PHP

As mentioned in this post on the Zend Developer Zone, the Zend/IBM collaboration group have released a Web 2.0 Starter Toolkit:

It offers a great start to reducing the coding yet helps you produce cool applications using Ajax, ATOM feeds and REST Web Services. It is a great on-ramp to get you working with Zend Core and IBM DB2 Express-C and Rich Internet Applications (RIA). This toolkit will also work with Zend Core for IBM, check out the FAQ. This is an excellent use case for DB2 pureXML.

It makes things simple like making ATOM feeds from a data in a pureXML database, making web services as simple as a point and click operation and check out the usage of your database via an Ajaxed interface.

Check out the project's website for more information. Currently, the project requires Windows (either XP or Server 2003).

According to a new article on InfoWorld today, Zend and IBM are working together to extend the reach of their combined technologies even further by focusing on more functionality around IBM's DB2 database.

Featured in the arrangement are enhanced IBM DB2 Express-C capabilities in IBM Zend Core for IBM, which is Zend's PHP offering. DB2 Express-C is IBM's hybrid relational-XML data server for accessing enterprise capabilities such as data replication, clustering and offsite disaster recovery.

Also included is new support for DB2 Connect technology to access i5/PS and z/OS DB2 data servers. DB2 Connect technology makes it easy to build PHP applications that leverage DB2 hosted on IBM System z and System i servers.

The article also mentions how users can use existing System i Linux partitions, System i BladeCenter and System x servers to take advantage of this new functionality. Zend will be providing the support for this new product (a "single support solution").