The product, which will be available as a free download, has tighter integration with the PHP scripting language based on customer interest and demand, Oracle says.

Oracle and Zend on Monday will announce an agreement in which the two companies have come together to deliver tighter integration between the Oracle database and the PHP open-source scripting language.

Oracle Corp., of Redwood Shores, Calif., and Zend Technologies Inc., of Cupertino, Calif., which employs PHP co-authors and offers products and services around the technology, will announce Zend Core for Oracle, a tested and supported product featuring integration between Oracle and PHP, Oracle executives said.

Zend Core for Oracle will be available as a free download in the third quarter of this year and will enable developers to deliver PHP applications that are tightly integrated with the Oracle database.

"We've had a long-standing commitment to PHP," said Monica Kumar, director of product marketing at Oracle, noting that Oracle's JDeveloper and Oracle Application Server support PHP.

Kumar said Oracle's move to deliver tighter integration with the PHP scripting language is based on customer interest and demand.

"We are making our commitment deep," she said. "Zend Core for Oracle is a complete, tested PHP distribution; it's a pre-built stack for PHP developers."

Moreover, Richard Rendell, senior director of product development at Oracle, said that currently developers have to download PHP and other components and "try to cobble it all together" to get the same functionality as exists in Zend Core for Oracle.

Meanwhile, one customer, Trader Electronic Media, a division of Trader Publishing Company, which publishes the AutoMart.com Web site, uses PHP and the Oracle database to power the site, which attracts more than 2.5 million visitors a month.

"The partnership between Zend and Oracle signifies true technological innovation for the PHP community," said Joe Fuller, chief technology officer for Trader Electronic Media, in a statement.

"AutoMart.com relies daily on the combination of Zend and Oracle technology to keep up with the intense demands of our customers. Knowing Zend and Oracle will continue to expand and improve upon already proven solutions means Trader Publishing Company will continue to rely on them to grow our business.

"Our success with Automart.com is prompting us to convert our Classifieds portal, Traderonline.com, from [Macromedia Inc.'s] ColdFusion to PHP. Oracle's performance, combined with the Web-scripting resources of PHP's vast user community, make Oracle/PHP a great combination for us."

Rendell said two areas Oracle and Zend are working to shore up for PHP are scalability and interoperability.

Rendell said Oracle is supporting efforts to increase interoperability between PHP and the J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition), and is in support of JSR (Java Specification Request) 223, which is looking to bridge the gap between scripting languages like PHP and the Java environment.

To read more about Oracle's newly rebranded middleware offering, Oracle Fusion Middleware, click here.

"We also have a PHP development section on the Oracle Technology Network," Rendell said.

Indeed, Oracle, in partnership with Zend, has launched the PHP Developer Center on the OTN (Oracle Technology Network) Web site, at http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/php/index.html.

Oracle officials said the site features various technical resources for the PHP developer, including installation guides for PHP with Oracle Application Server and Oracle Database, an online forum and the Oracle JDeveloper 10g PHP extension.

This article was originally published on eWEEK.com.

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