Hello,
I am starting this thread after some talks i had some time ago on other forums (before to start our dedicated Zend Framework forum)...
As far as I tested until now, because of multiple reasons, performance of Zend Framework for very intensive sites is not quite good atm.
I posted also on Zend Framework Tutorials site a link to a great benchmark made for multiple frameworks, by Paul M. Jones, on his blog:
New Year’s Benchmarks « View Tutorial*
So, performance problems with Zend Framework there are because:
- PDO layer is adding some overhead
- since is not at 1.0 version at least now development is more important than optimize/clean
- also, since basically Zend Framework is yet another layer will add more overhead...
I tested myself for some sites i am doing, some of them with lot of pages displayed (milions/month) aka lot of Zend Framework things done behind (especially if on database side)... Until now i didn't used at all MVC side of Zend Framework, i preferred my own approach, which means with MVC will be probably more overhead...
So, after i upgraded some of sites to Zend Framework i saw servers loading increasing a lot, now i need to upgrade one of webservers because he can't handle anymore one of the sites...
But, thing is this overhead maybe is not/will be not overhead because:
a) i think Zend Framework is adding a "safety" layer which was not before made, or was made with third party components, without to be sure about a quality level
Let's give you a quick sample: i think almost all PHP developers used sometime "HTML Mime Mail for PHP", which is widely used into web. Problem is i personally think this component rather made more problems than helps because is not protecting at all against mail injection. I also think should be rather put offline due to this security risks, or at least a warning should be. Not everyone knows what is mail inject, and how to treat, aso.
So, better to have extra overhead with extra safety... And i think Zend Framework would be continuously updated, so security risks could be eliminated... Anyway, developers should update their Zend Framework installations from time to time...
b) i think applications are more easier to develop with just one "tool" (OO tool) instead of spending lot of time with integrating lot of third party tools, or develope your own (which you would see that ae outdated after a while); Also, this integration/easier usage will attract also newbie developers to a more modern programming style, and as i said before, more "safe"
c) performance will increase i think if after 1.0 version we're going to have some optimizing, code cleaning... Probably not much, extra-facilities added in time aso will probably tend to slow things...
So, overall, prepare for some hardware upgrades, but also prepare for doing better, safer, more easier to develop web applications...