IBM Corp. and Zend Technologies Inc. on Tuesday are delivering on previously stated plans to help developers deploy applications to IBM databases via PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor).

Zend Core for IBM, which is based on PHP 5 technology, includes integration with the IBM"s Cloudscape and DB2 databases. It is available as a free download at www.ibm.com/developerworks/db2/products/opensource. The two companies had announced plans to develop the product in February. The product integrates drivers for Cloudscape and DB2, said Bernie Spang, director of databases at IBM.

"PHP is a technology that"s being used by a large and growing community of developers, so it"s an open developer community that we wish to serve as part of our support of open standards and open source communities in general," Spang said. "It"s also important because our client base of enterprises of all sizes -- small, medium, and large -- is leveraging the PHP capabilities" to run businesses, he said.

IBM and Zend also said they plan to further boost PHP technology to include support for high-level database integration frameworks and enhanced PHP Web-services standards. IBM is positioning PHP as part of its SOA strategy for interaction between services developed on multiple platforms.

"The focus of SOA is that your applications are services regardless of what technology they"re developed in. You want to interact and interoperate with one another in a loosely coupled fashion," Spang said.

Zend on Tuesday is announcing Zend Network, a service and support system to provide updates and support to PHP developers.

Also in the tools arena:

* Borland Software announced it will host "24 Hours of Delphi," an online radio broadcast on the Borland Development Network beginning July 13 at midnight at mms://bdntv.borland.com/chat. The broadcast will feature interviews with and presentations by Borland Delphi engineers, partners, authors and community members. Delphi is Borland"s development tool for Windows applications.

* Macromedia has made available a public beta of Maelstrom, which is the next major release of the Flash Player, also known as Flash Player 8. It is available at www.macromedia.com/software/flashplayer/public_beta. Key features of Maelstrom include performance improvements, boosted font display and a higher-quality video codec. Maelstrom is due for general release later this summer.