Zend Technologies, the subject of Oracle acquisition rumors, has updated its implementation of the PHP development language for the giant's database family.

The Zend Core for Oracle has been updated to support Oracle's free database, Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE) along with the Oracle Database 10g Release 2.

Oracle announced its Database XE, launched Tuesday, late last year with a view to giving developers a reliable database for use in an embedded environment when building their applications. Of course, Oracle has since bought Sleepycat Software, maker of the popular Berkley DB embedded database.

Zend has worked with both Oracle and IBM to optimize its PHP environment to their databases during the last year. The goal is to improve development and runtime for open source developers whose applications require a database layer. IBM released a free, cut-down version of its own DB2 database, DB2 Express-C, in January.®

Related stories

• PHP takes aim at Radar (23 July 2007)
• Zend signs PHP accord with Microsoft (31 October 2006)
• Oracle refreshes Berkeley DB (27 September 2006)
• PHP project follows script (9 March 2006)
• Oracle opens embedded business unit (1 March 2006)
• Open source ISVs must side with SAP to survive - SAP (15 February 2006)
• In Brief Oracle eats Sleepycat (15 February 2006)
• Oracle in talks to consume three open source darlings - report (10 February 2006)
• Zend tempts PHP developers' corporate desires with refresh (8 November 2005)
• Zend scripts industry PHP push (20 October 2005)
• Oracle teams up with Zend for PHP love-in (20 May 2005)