Over the last few years, a shift has been seen from physical to digital platforms due to more convenience and global reach. Due to this application development sector is growing at an exponential rate for satisfying people’s demands. Developers uses a wide variety of framework which helps in fast development by providing appropriate tools. Some frameworks are very popular while some do not have much recognition so we will compare Zend and Phalcon which are PHP frameworks and study their features.
What is Phalcon?
Phalcon can be understood as an open-source PHP framework that is based on an MVC pattern. Developed by Andres Gutierrez using a combination of C, Zephir, and PHP. It is one of the fastest web frameworks. It was launched in 2012 and can be operated on different systems like Unix, Mac OS, Windows, etc.
Advantages of Phalcon
- It has a low maintenance cost.
- Database management is easy due to Phalcon Framework Query Language.
- It provides high security through code encryption.
- It is highly customizable due to the Zephir language.
Disadvantages of Phalcon
- It does not have enough community support if mistakes occur.
- The installation process is complex.
What is Zend?
Zend is an open-source PHP web framework. It is free software that has a BSD license. The development credit for this software goes to Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans. It is an object-oriented framework that uses MVC (Model View Controller) concept. Initially, it was released in 2006 and the stable release was in 2016. This software is written using PHP language. Due to its high-security features, it is used by most web developers.
Advantages of Zend
- It makes development faster and saves time.
- It can be easily integrated with external plugins.
- It provides quality control to meet industry standards.
- It is highly scalable.
Disadvantages of Zend
- Its plugins are expensive.
- It has complex documentation which is a bit confusing.
Below is a table of differentiation between Phalcon and Zend:
|
Category |
Phalcon |
Zend |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Phalcon is a PHP framework that is based on the MVC pattern and implemented in C as a server extension. | Zend is an MVC-based free framework that is used in making different applications. |
| Official Website | Its official website is phalcon.io/en-us | Official website of Zend is zend.com |
| Scalability | It is less scalable. | Zend is really flexible in terms of scaling and it can be easily scaled. |
| Root Access | It requires root access for its installation. | It does not require root access for its installation. |
| Speed | Speed is really fast and it can handle around 1400 requests per second. | Speed is slow as compared to Phalcon. |
| Learning | It is comparatively difficult to learn. | It is easier to understand and learn as compared to Phalcon. |
| Authentication and Authorization | It provides both authentications as well as authorization features. | It provides only an authentication feature. |
| Customization | It provides a large number of customizing options. | Customization has a few customizing options. |
Conclusion/Summary
Comparing Zend and Phalcon on the basis of different parameters, we find that it is good for building websites and web applications that require high performance. On the other hand, Zend is highly scalable and is used in making complex applications for large industries including data science organizations. Both can be used as per developers’ needs.