In this paper we present Zend Architecture, which is an open source technology for developing web applications and services, based on object-oriented components, and the Model-View-Controller architectural pattern, also known as MVC, which is the fundament of this architecture. The MVC presentation emphasises its main characteristics, such as facilitating the components reuse by dividing the application into distinct interconnected modules, tasks distribution in the process of developing an application, the MVC life cycle and also the essential features of the components in which it separates the application: model, view, controller. The controller coordinates the models and views and it’s responsible with manipulating the user events through the corresponding actions. The model contains application rules, respectively the scripts that implement the database manipulation. The third component, the view represents the controllers interface with the user or the way it displays the response to the event triggered by the user. Another aspect treated in this paper consists in highlighting the Zend architecture advantages and disadvantages. Among the framework advantages, we can enumerate good code organization, due to its delimitation into three sections, presentation, logic and data access, and dividing the code into components, which facilitates the code reuse and testing. Other advantages are the open-source license and the support for multiple database systems. The main disadvantages are represented by its size and complexity, that makes it hard to understand for a beginner programmer, the resources it needs etc. The last section of the paper presents a comparison between Zend and other PHP architectures, like Symphony, CakePHP and CodeIgniter, which includes their essential features and points out their similarities and differences, based on the unique functions that set them apart from others. The main thing that distinguishes ZF from the others it’s represented by the various components that help developers build efficient applications and create application models founded on the database engine they require. In the papers conclusion we argue the superiority of Zend architecture, by presenting solid motives that justify this affirmation, such as the implementation of the last features of HTML5 and PHP5.3, open source license, vast documentation, server support, large classes library and advanced security level.
