techno.blog("Dion")

The PHP folks must be happy. They just caught up to Java 5 ;)

PHP 5.0

Some of the key features of PHP 5 include:

• The Zend Engine II
  with a new object model and dozens of new features.
• XML support has been completely redone in PHP 5, all extensions are now
  focused around the excellent libxml2 library
  (http://www.xmlsoft.org/).
• A new SimpleXML extension for easily accessing and manipulating XML as
  PHP objects. It can also interface with the DOM extension and vice-versa.
• A brand new built-in SOAP extension for interoperability with Web Services.
• A new MySQL extension named MySQLi for developers using MySQL 4.1 and later.
  This new extension includes an object-oriented interface in addition to
  a traditional interface; as well as support for many of MySQL’s new features,
  such as prepared statements.
• SQLite has been bundled with PHP. For more information on SQLite,
  please visit their website.
• Streams have been greatly improved, including the ability to access
  low-level socket operations on streams.
• And lots more…

For changes since Release Candidate 3, please consult the
ChangeLog.

Having seen the NightmareXML APIs that we often have to work with, “SimpleXML” sounds good to me!