Recently I stared coding for a project with Zend Framework at my work place. Before start working with Zend Framework I was wondering what is the best PHP framework for PHP based enterprice application development. Some might argue pointing CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Kohana...ete are best for PHP application development. But I would recomand Zend Framework over following reasons.

1. Toolkit independent AJAX support. (Dojo, Prototype, JQuery...etc) 
2. Based on MVC architecture.
3. Web services support.
4. Privileges Management with Zend_Acl.
5. Authentication with Zend_Auth.
6. Easy Form generation with Zend_Form.
7. Easy Validation through Zend_Validate.
8. Supports Unit Testing.
9. Supports multiple database servers. (MYSQL, MSSQL, Oracle...etc)
10. Cool development studio called 'Zend Studio' for application development. (Integrated Zend Framework support, Debuging and Unit Testing, Platform Independent )
11. Easy PHP stack with Zend Server as development environment.

How to install Zend Framework

Installing Zend Framework is real simple. 

1. Go to framework.zend.com and download the framework.   
2. Extract the bundle.
3. Add the path to the library/ subdirectory of the archive to your php.ini's include_path setting.
4. And go to /bin directory in the extracted archive and click on zf.bat if you are using windows based OS. Open the terminal and execute zf.sh if you are using a unix based OS. This will generate the  application structure for you .
5. Zend Framework is ready to use in your system now.

Optionally you can use this method.

1. Download the Zend Studio.
2. Install it.
3. Create a new Zend Framework Project.
4. New Project will automatically generate the application structure for you and path will also added automatically. 

Create the application configuration file according to your requirements and enjoy coding with Zend Framework.

Here I have attached this video which shows some of the capabilities of Zend Studio 7.0.

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