PHP 5.0.0 Released!

[Esteban Fernández]

  PHP 5.0.0 Released!

[13-Jul-2004] The PHP team is proud to announce the final release of PHP 
5 </downloads.php#v5>!

Some of the key features of PHP 5 include:

    * The Zend Engine II <http://www.zend.com/php5/zend-engine2.php>
      with a new object model and dozens of new features.
    * XML support has been completely redone in PHP 5, all extensions
      are now focused around the excellent libxml2 library
      (http://www.xmlsoft.org/).
    * A new SimpleXML extension for easily accessing and manipulating
      XML as PHP objects. It can also interface with the DOM extension
      and vice-versa.
    * A brand new built-in SOAP extension for interoperability with Web
      Services.
    * A new MySQL extension named MySQLi for developers using MySQL 4.1
      and later. This new extension includes an object-oriented
      interface in addition to a traditional interface; as well as
      support for many of MySQL's new features, such as prepared
      statements.
    * SQLite has been bundled with PHP. For more information on SQLite,
      please visit their website <http://www.sqlite.org/>.
    * Streams have been greatly improved, including the ability to
      access low-level socket operations on streams.
    * And lots more...