I recently stumbled across an article on the web regarding Magento and the supposed relation it has with Zend.
WebGuys: Magento is not a Zend Framework
The author of the article mentioned that he was asked in a job interview “What do you know about Magento?” and he answered “Magento is an open source e-commerce platform based on Zend Framework.” Wrong answer, he says.
After reading, it made me think, I’m not well versed with Zend as of now. But based on what I read on Magento’s portal it explains that “Magento is a content management system(CMS) based on PHP and mySQL for web hosting service, which was built using parts of the Zend Framework“.
I have to admit I probably would’ve given the same answer(or maybe another deviation that I usually cook up) and end up red faced.
Take note from now on, Zend Framework is basically a library of classes which enables developers to create high load applications. Although structure-wise similar to Zend, Magento is a complete application that consists of a great number of strongly interconnected core extensions. Read the article linked above for a more in-depth explanation.
But to sum it up, Magento is not a Zend application, but it was built using Zend Framework components. Of course, if you’re familiar with one or the other it doesn’t hurt to know this small yet important tidbit.