What about the option: "No change, I will continue to use PHP as the back end to my HTML/JavaScript based front end"?

Sure, the blog is called "InsideRIA" but at least give us a chance to not drink the kool-aid, ok?

Flex and PHP integration has been available for at least 2 years now. Both WebORB and AMFPHP provide that integration. WebORB goes above and beyond what Zend/Adobe announced, it offers Flex Remoting, Data Management and Messaging for Flex/Flash and PHP. So please help me understand what it is that Adobe/Zend actually introduced and did that is so new that all of a sudden PHP developers can start doing that they could not before???

I agree with the request for a "No change" option that indicates that I have been using PHP all along.

I like CF but I had to give it up years ago due to pricing problems. All my backends are in PHP and this announcement means nothing for me in any case as I have pointedly ignored Zend due to the problems in making my sites portable when using it.

Really this is only of any importance if you use Zend products and I can't recall any PHP coders locally who do.

Sorry Rich but Zend != PHP and while the Zend folks would like to muddy the waters and make people think they are synonymous they are not.

This is interesting to me, because I'm trying to figure out the business aspect of this. Obviously, there's some money in PHP by tool developers from Zend (I'd have thought not, but the very existence of them proves my assumptions wrong). But why support just one specific framework?

I agree with a lot of what Mark says. There's already a lot of ways to to integrate PHP and Flex. (I'm writing about it in an upcoming book.) So, I guess that having Adobe officially supporting such a thing is both a GOOD thing, yet sort-of indifferent as far as a lot of PHP people go. But a quality well-supported PHP AMF library I believe is something everyone can agree on being a good thing...I just wonder how a lot of PHP people feel about being tied to only one framework, though. As I've learned, frameworks are like girlfriends...each dev has an opinion on the perfect one. Which brings me to the point that I'd like this a lot better if this were a more generic library.

I put this in that warm-fuzzy feeling for management (which isn't a bad thing). "Oh, Adobe supports PHP in this library," dev says. "Well, then I guess you can migrate some of our apps over to that," management responds. (A little simplified, yes.)

As far as your question about whether this will bring more Flex to the front-end...Well, after a couple large Flex projects, I'm starting to believe that the sweet sport for Flex and web apps isn't just a Flex app, but using Flex components to "enhance" the richness of regular web-based applications. It's the best of both worlds. (Google Finance is my favorite example of such a useful web-based applicatin.)

As far as business motivation for Adobe goes, maybe they think that the PHP is the starter drug and that as a company matures, they'll be moving off that stack and onto J2EE for other things, in which case they'll be able to sell server software?

Regardless, I'll be checking out the stuff from Zend because I've never really worked with a total PHP stack like that before -- and I can't argue against one-click shopping. And with Adobe supporting their protocols with it, it makes for a good argument to incorporate it to a certain type of client who needs that type of argument.

I trying to learn flex. I don't do zend or php. My roots are dot net and classic asp. So I tend to go where the tutorials and demos lead me. That could be zend/flex if the material is there but..... if it costs me money to try or dev or deploy then I might not be able. Because this is not the standard toolset of my department or company I won't have a chance if I need money first. Instead I have a chance to bring in new technology when its free (to a certain point). I basically do it on my time. Then if the application shines and the technology is the reason I have good leverage to say lets put up some bucks to do the pro level stuff, get training, etc. So said, I would like coldfusion to have a single server free version like oracle does. I need more then just a dev version to prove a technology and give the product a chance to make users love and demand its features.

I think PHP folks are the worst clueless of all programming languages.

Zend company != Zend framework. Zend framework 1.7 will full support Adobe Flex AMF protocol backed by Adobe and the Zend company folks. Zend framework is a very good thing happen to PHP because it is like the Standard Library of PHP and its not PHP anymore the mess that used to be before.

There are another implementations of AMF for PHP but this one could be the standard because is backed by the people who created Flex, what else you can ask for?!. Zend framework is a really good thing happen to PHP, Before Zend framework I didn't want to touch PHP with all the problems and naming conventions had before but Now with PHP and Zend Framework I have a robust platform to develop web applications and more with the support of Flex for the front end.

PHP folks need to learn new tech and languages so can open mind more forward.

Disclaimer: I'm the manager of the Zend Framework project- don't expect my comments to be entirely unbiased. :)
There are a lot of things to address here. First, while it is true that Adobe contributed Zend_Amf to Zend Framework, this doesn't mean that Zend_Amf can't be used with any other framework- or none at all, for that matter. All ZF components are designed with a 'use at will' architecture, and many developers use our components alongside frameworks like CakePHP, Symfony, and Code Igniter. This is the 'library' aspect of the project. Maybe that's one of the reasons Adobe chose to contribute their AMF support in PHP to the ZF project.
Zend_Amf was written by the maintainer of the AMFPHP project, Wade Arnold. There are at least a few big differences between AMFPHP and Zend_Amf, including Zend_Amf supporting AMF3 and benefiting from all the new features and performance enhancements in PHP 5. In fact, Wade has announced that future versions of AMFPHP will be based on Zend_Amf, so the projects are really more collaborative efforts at this point- not competitors.
I haven't used WebORB before, but it seem like its scope is *much* larger than Zend_Amf. Does anyone know if you can take a small, pure-PHP library out of WebORB and use it in a PHP 5 app? If so, then maybe that is another option for those looking at Zend_Amf. And that's fine with us; multiple options are a good thing and the fact that there is typically more than one option in almost anything PHP has been one of the greatest strengths of the language and community.

In any case, no matter what your technology choices, I hope they serve you well.

,Wil