Zend Framework
The goal of the Zend Framework is to "Provide a repository of high quality components that are actively supported." The ability to use these components within Drupal will accelerate adoption of many developing standards without reinventing the wheel.
However with this framework comes a higher entry requirements than Drupal in that "These components must be written entirely in PHP 5 and E_STRICT compliant." ... and the licensing of the Zend Framework is the new BSD.
The benefits of working with two world class open source projects should encourage everyone to consider using a ZF component where it makes sense.
QUESTION
Solid frameworks like zend and symfony are becoming more and more popular.
We have seen that magento (an ecommerce application), which is based on the zend framework, is now the leading PHP ecommerce solution.
Can Drupal 7 or 8 be build uppon the zend framework ?
REST Server
A REST Server is now available for the Services module, so that external REST clients can communicate with Drupal Services. In order to use the REST Server, you have to install the Zend Framework.
The Zend Framework Module
The Zend Framework Module for Drupal ensures that the Zend Framework is installed properly and ready for use. It lists the Zend Framework version number in the server status page, let's the administrator change Zend's installation directory, as well as provide a nice API feature set to make the Zend Framework's functionality easily accessible to other modules. One of these API benefits is the zend_initialize($class) function that cleanly includes a class from the Zend Framework and make it ready for use.
This could lead to some very powerful Service modules that use the powerful web service platform.
