Re: PHP without Zend

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Rick,

> Operations tells me that the way Zend handles authentication doesn't
> conform to our corporate security policies.  As a result, we can't
> install it on our system. I don't think this a battle I can win.

Interesting..   I wonder what this means?  Do you mean the fact that you 
have to sign up with Zend in order to get a copy of PHP?

Or do you mean the way users are authenticated when they connect to your 
software?  (Which is entirely under your control as programmer, and has 
little to do with Zend.)

There _was_ an issue using BASIC authentication with Zend Core. 
Technically, that was Apache, not Zend... but since Zend packaged it 
that way, you could blame them, I guess.  The issue was that you 
connected to a proxy of the native Apache, and it would pass the request 
on to a PASE version of Apache.  This authentication scheme violated PCI 
standards, so many people didn't like it.  This was fixed in Zend 
Server, however...  just don't use Zend Core.

> I want to try some web stuff with PHP.  If we can't install Zend I'd
> like to look at alternative ways of doing it.

You can certainly use the open source PHP.  With only a few exceptions, 
Zend's package is just a package of the open source PHP with a bunch of 
open source add-ons.  (There are SOME Zend-specific add-ons, especially 
when you use the for-pay versions of Zend Server... but they are a small 
part of the package in the community edition.)

Mainly what Zend has done is save you the work of downloading the 
packages, getting them all to compile, getting them to interface with 
Apache, etc, etc.