Zend engine
Encyclopedia
The Zend Engine is an open source
scripting engine (a virtual machine), commonly known for the important role it plays in the web automation language PHP
. It was originally developed by Andi Gutmans
and Zeev Suraski
while they were students at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. They later founded a company called Zend Technologies
in Ramat Gan, Israel
. The name Zend is a combination of their forenames, Zeev and Andi.
The first version of the Zend Engine appeared in 1999 alongside PHP version 4. It was written as a highly optimized modular back-end, which for the first time could be used in applications outside of PHP. The performance, reliability and extensibility
of the engine played a significant role in increasing the popularity of PHP.
The current version of the virtual machine is The Zend Engine II and is at the heart of PHP 5. The source code for the Zend Engine has been freely available under the PHP License
since 2001; it is an open-source project, and there are now several programmers from all over the world who volunteer their time and skills to expand and improve the code base.
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
scripting engine (a virtual machine), commonly known for the important role it plays in the web automation language PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
. It was originally developed by Andi Gutmans
Andi Gutmans
Andi Gutmans is an Israeli programmer with Swiss roots, PHP developer and co-founder of Zend Technologies. A graduate of the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Gutmans and fellow student Zeev Suraski created PHP 3 in 1997...
and Zeev Suraski
Zeev Suraski
Zeev Suraski is an Israeli programmer, PHP developer and co-founder of Zend Technologies. A graduate of the Technion in Haifa, Israel, Suraski and fellow student Andi Gutmans created PHP 3 in 1997. In 1999 they wrote the Zend Engine, the core of PHP 4, and founded Zend Technologies, which has...
while they were students at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. They later founded a company called Zend Technologies
Zend Technologies
Zend Technologies Ltd. is an Israeli world wide web infrastructure software company with headquarters in Cupertino, California, U.S., technology center in Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv, Israel and offices in France, Italy and Germany...
in Ramat Gan, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. The name Zend is a combination of their forenames, Zeev and Andi.
The first version of the Zend Engine appeared in 1999 alongside PHP version 4. It was written as a highly optimized modular back-end, which for the first time could be used in applications outside of PHP. The performance, reliability and extensibility
Extensibility
In software engineering, extensibility is a system design principle where the implementation takes into consideration future growth. It is a systemic measure of the ability to extend a system and the level of effort required to implement the extension...
of the engine played a significant role in increasing the popularity of PHP.
The current version of the virtual machine is The Zend Engine II and is at the heart of PHP 5. The source code for the Zend Engine has been freely available under the PHP License
PHP License
The PHP License is the software license under which the PHP scripting language is released. The PHP License is a non-copyleft free software license according to the Free Software Foundation and an open source license according to the Open Source Initiative...
since 2001; it is an open-source project, and there are now several programmers from all over the world who volunteer their time and skills to expand and improve the code base.
See also
- Comparison of application virtual machinesComparison of Application Virtual MachinesThis article lists some software virtual machines that are typically used for allowing application bytecode to be portably run on many different computer architectures and operating systems. The application is usually run on the computer using an interpreter or just-in-time compilation...
- Parrot virtual machineParrot virtual machineParrot is a register-based process virtual machine designed to run dynamic languages efficiently. It uses just-in-time compilation for speed to reduce the interpretation overhead. It is currently possible to compile Parrot assembly language and PIR to Parrot bytecode and execute it...
External links
- Zend Engine Homepage
- http://www.zend.com/engine2/ZendEngine-2.0.pdf
- The Zend Engine License, version 2.00
- https://wiki.php.net/internals/engine