Migrating a Zend Framework application to ZF 2

Really nice introduction on ZF2, I was afraid that I had to need more knowledge regarding ZF2 but everything was very well explained

As you explained on the start, when having experience with both of them you might not learn as much as a beginner. But still you I got new insights! Thank you.

Work on your talking pace though, because at the end there were still interesting subjects which didn't got the attention they deserved!

Having worked with ZF1 and Symfony2, yesterdays tutorial by Rob Allen was my first glimpse of ZF2. After attending Bart McLeod's talk, I've a decent understanding of how ZF2 works, and that migrating a ZF1 project to ZF2 isn't something to take lightly ;)

A nice introduction to ZF2 and some very usefull tips, but you could have been more ambitious. I mean, i like your aproach for a small application one is working on alone, but what if you have a large application constantly being developed by a team of developers? It seems to me your aproach would require to stop regular development until porting is finished, or are you going to keep up with processing the changes from regular development while porting?

A more ambitious and less risky alternative could be to extend the existing application step by step to work on ZF2 while it remains fully functional on ZF1. This is done by one or two developers while maintenance by the regular team continues on the same code base. Porting will require a lot of choices between making adaptations on the application level, wrapping ZF2 components with a ZF1 compatible adapters or the other way around, whatever is the least work given the existing code and target design (Yes, you need to make a plan first).

When erverything works on both platforms you can go into production on ZF2. Once producton is stable on ZF2 you can remove ZF1-targeting code and confugurations that er no longer required. Finally port the rest of the application code to work without adapters on ZF2.

I did something like this with my applications when porting from PHP4 to PHP5: the 1.x versions of the phpPeanuts.org framework worked on both platforms for several years while the applications where ported one by one to run on PHP5. Then in a much shorter period each of them was ported to the PHP5-only 2.0 version of the framework.

I admit this would be a lot more work with ZF because of the bigger API and structural changes, requiring more wrapping etc., but i bet it can be done. It may cost more for the IT department (but probably less then trying to keep up with changes from regular development), but will be much less disruptive to the business then stopping regular development, so the orinization as a whole may be better off, including finacially. Furthermore, the team that does regular development gets time to learn ZF2 step by step instead of having to make a big leap of knowledge (and faith). Finally, if the porting project takes a bigger effort then estimated, you can take more time without the project failing completely (which would leave the application stuck on ZF1). And i bet it could result in another very interesting talk ;-)