Hello all,

I'm an experienced PHP programmer who has recently discovered Zend. I've used frameworks like Symfony and I like the 'loosely coupled' approach of ZF. Now to my question.

I'm currently working on the backend functionality of a portal whose interface is already developed in Flex. I'm using Doctrine for ORM (MySQL db) and currently, ZF is used only for the controller/business logic implementation. However, the future plans for this portal include an aggressive expansion (through different sub-sites - one for shopping, one for kids, one aimed at content management etc etc). What is the best approach for using Zend in a scenario like this?

I'm currently using the traditional controllers which send back XML data for the Flex interface. Keeping in mind the future requirements, I'm trying to investigate other approaches (mainly, SOA). What would be the best way to implement a backend in PHP aimed at scalability? Friends have suggested that I use JSON instead of XML and expose functionality as services. Is it the correct way, when my controller does only data encoding/decoding and validation?

I know this is a pretty general question and I'm not expecting a specific answer. I just want to know what is the general take of the ZF community in a situation like this.

TIA,
GVK.