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Zend Framework 1.7.2 is released.

changes, download

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The PHP development team is proud to announce the first alpha release (Windows binaries will appear in the next few days) of the upcoming minor version update of PHP. The new version PHP 5.3 is expected to improve stability and performance as well as add new language syntax and extensions. Several new features have already been documented in the official documentation, others are listed on the wiki in preparation of getting documented. Please also review the NEWS file.

THIS IS A DEVELEOPMENT PREVIEW - DO NOT USE IT IN PRODUCTION!

The purpose of this alpha release is to encourage users to not only actively participate in identifying bugs, but also in ensuring that all new features or necessary backwards compatibility breaks are noted in the documentation. Please report any findings to the QA mailinglist or the bug tracker.

There have been a great number of other additions and improvements, but here is a short overview of the most important changes:

• Namespaces (documentation maybe out dated)
• Late static binding and __callStatic
• Lambda functions and closures
• Addition of the intl, phar (phar is scheduled for some more work a head of alpha2), fileinfo and sqlite3 extensions
• Optional cyclic garbage collection
• Optional support for the MySQLnd replacement driver for libmysql
• Windows older than Windows 2000 (Windows 98, NT4, etc.) are not supported anymore (details)
• New syntax features like NOWDOC, limited GOTO, ternary short cut "?:"

Several under the hood changes also require in depth testing with existing applications to ensure that any backwards compatibility breaks are minimized. This is especially important for users that require the undocumented Zend engine multibyte support.

The current release plan states that there will be alpha/beta/RC releases in 2-3 week intervals with an expected stable release of PHP 5.3 between mid September and mid October of 2008.

from www.php.net

An overview of new features:

• Dojo Integration
  • JSON-RPC
  • Dojo Data packing
  • Dojo View Helper
  • Dijit integration with Zend_Form & Zend_View
  • Dojo Library Distribution
• SOAP
  • SOAP Server
  • SOAP Client
  • Autodiscovery
  • WSDL access
  • WSDL Generation
• Preview of Tooling Project in Laboratory (see /laboratory folder)
  • Command Line Interface
  • Project Asset Management
• Unit Testing Harness for Controllers
• Lucene 2.3 Index File Format Support
• Zend_Session save handler for Database Tables
• Paginator Component
• Text/Figlet Support
• ReCaptcha Service
• Zend_Config_Xml Attribute Support
• Character Set Option for DB Adapters
• Zend File Transfer Component
• New Media View Helpers (Flash, Quicktime, Object, and Page)
• Support in Zend_Translate for INI File Format

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1. If a method can be static, declare it static. Speed improvement is by a factor of 4.
2. echo is faster than print.
3. Use echo’s multiple parameters instead of string concatenation.
4. Set the maxvalue for your for-loops before and not in the loop.
5. Unset your variables to free memory, especially large arrays.
6. Avoid magic like __get, __set, __autoload
7. require_once() is expensive
8. Use full paths in includes and requires, less time spent on resolving the OS paths.
9. If you need to find out the time when the script started executing, $_SERVER[’REQUEST_TIME’] is preferred to time()
10. See if you can use strncasecmp, strpbrk and stripos instead of regex

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