This tutorial is intended to give a very basic introduction to using the Zend Framework to write a basic database driven application.
NOTE: This tutorial has been tested on versions 1.0.0 of the Zend Framework. It stands a very good chance of working with later versions, but it’s unlikely to work on versions prior to version 1.0.0

Over the lifetime of an application this type of application becomes un-maintainable as the client keeps requesting changes which are hacked into the code-base in various places. One method of improving the maintainability of the application is to separate out the code on the page into three distinct parts (and usually separate files):
Model
The model part of the application is the part that is concerned with the specifics of the data to be displayed. In the above example code it is the concept of “news”. Thus the model is generally concerned about the “business” logic part of the application and tends to load and save to databases.
View
The view consists of bits of the application that are concerned with the display to the user. Usually, this is the HTML.
Controller
The controller ties together the specifics of the model and the view to ensure that the correct data is displayed on the page.

The Zend Framework uses the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture. This is used to separate out the different parts of your application to make development and maintenance easier.
Requirements
The Zend Framework has the following requirements:
• PHP 5.1.4 (or higher)
• A web server supporting mod_rewrite functionality.

Download pdf Getting Started with the Zend Framework