Frame works for web application development

This is such a long time, since my last post. Actually things were pretty mess at my side. Now its getting better. Without taking much of the time talking about myself, I am jumping directly into the technical stuff I gathered during this time.
Basically I will talk about some PHP and Flash/Flex frameworks. And then a little about the Flash remoting options I  got into. During last month I was going through a whole lot of reading and analysis of the Flex, Flash and PHP frameworks . The ones I went through are as follows

PHP Frameworks
1. Symphony (http://www.symfony-project.org/)
2. Zend (http://framework.zend.com/)
3. CakePHP (http://cakephp.org/)

Flash Framework
1. Gaia (http://www.gaiaflashframework.com/)

Flex Frameworks
1. Cairngorm (http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/cairngorm/Cairngorm)
2. PureMVC (http://puremvc.org/)
3. Mate (http://mate.asfusion.com/)

Considering myself a beginner on web-frameworks as I am going to develop something for the first time in a well known framework rather than my own application specific frameworks. I found quality experience just by learning the specs of each framework and then diving into coding gave me a little more experience in the frameworks. Then went on for some hands on into them searching for the most easy to learn, flexible and ready to deliver framework.
Beginning with Flash, I never found a framework other than Gaia.Though, this is the only framework I found, but I am more than impressed with the performance of it. As it says itself to make a full website in less than 10 minutes, I found its true to its words.I have studied it for an hour though, just to get some background of it. But yes, if you are a pure flash guy you are going to love this. I fell in love in the first go. Created one website in just 10 minutes as promised by GAIA. I love it. :) . Simple to learn, flexible to work with and clean project management. I would say a must have for Flash.
On Flex side, there are lots of frameworks, some are a little older than the others but almost all of them are pre-mature, though one can develop a full application with any of the frameworks and I have seen a lot of good example projects with each of the framework, but they all are maturing each day. While Cairngorm and PureMVC both seemed powerful, I found the new release of PureMVC with single and multicore to be more flexible and has got more to deliver. The problem with PureMVC is lack of good supported documentation. The learning curve for both of these are kind of equally tough. Then I tried ‘Mate’. Its overwhelming and cool. At first I was a little reluctant regarding the framework but as I started reading it and diving into it, I liked it. It took me just 1 and half day (probably I took more time), to get productive in the framework. But then its productive starting from day 2. I am impressed and going to have it for my next project.
On the server side, I am going to use PHP. I got similar kind of experience in PHP frameworks as Flex. Both ‘Symphony’ and ‘Zend’ framework impressed me with their features, but disappointed me on the learning curve side. Starting with ‘CakePHP’, it took me 1 day to get myself comfortable in the framework, the 2nd day was the code incorporation and going through the docs. And from the 3rd day I am productive on the framework. CakePHP, is simply a cake to bake. Its flexible, powerful, simple and awesome.
Now, though the following are not frameworks, but kind of. I am talking about remoting. I went through AMFPHP and WebORB PHP. Both took me some time to get comfortable with. But once done its pretty easy. If we compare, both are kind of gives the same kind of result. I liked AMFPHP though, because of its tininess. Yes, AMFPHP installation package is much smaller than webORB PHP. But then webORB has code generation feature, which AMFPHP is considering to provide in next version, may be. Here the choice of mine would be either of the two. Then the idea of porting to different server environments came to mind. So finally decided upon WebORB as it has ported itself to JAVA and dotNET. I have tried the dotNET version of webORB and its kind of same as PHP, only the classes would be dotNET assemblies.
So my next development environment contains
CakePHP+webORB PHP+Mate

I hope to put the updates and experiences regarding the frameworks as I continue to develop in them.

I am back :)

cheers