PHP 5.0 Released

The release of PHP 5, introducing a significantly improved object model, robust XML support (SimpleXML, DOM), and a new MySQL extension (MySQLi), laid the essential groundwork for frameworks like Zend Framework to thrive with modern OOP paradigms.

Significance

Provided the foundational object-oriented capabilities necessary for a sophisticated framework like Zend Framework to be built, addressing many prior limitations of PHP 4.