Posted by smorrey on 09/25/19 11:27

Hello everyone, just wanted to share my experiences with Zend "the php
company".
I decided to do the test drive of the Enterprise grade developer
studio.
Big mistake!
>From day one I had nothing but problems.
After realizing that something terrible had happened to my webserver
during the install process, I figured WTF maybe I did something wrong.

I wiped my hard drive and started again, this time using the
Apache/MySQL/PHP that comes with it, rather than pointing it to my own.

Same result, but this time I realized the installer had fubared some
scripts and locations. It also missed a few permissions that it should
have set.

I tracked them down, repointed some scripts to the right sockets, and I
was off.
At that point I decided to install the Developer Studio Client on my
workstation.

That thing just crapped out saying it couldn't find some libraries.

So I created a support ticket to ask what I should do.
They kindly pointed me to an obscure knowledge base article, that
didn't appear when searching ANY of the keyword errors.

This article told me, that I needed to hexedit the installer, then
after it installed I had to hexedit the ZDE binary!

What the hell kind of installer requires you to hexedit it, before it
can work?
Furthermore the article claimed the binary was in a place that didn't
exist, so I had to updatedb and do a search on the filename, cross my
fingers and hope against hope I had picked the right one.

Fortunately I did.

After I installed the client, I decided to double check developer
studio server, and make sure everything was going fine.
Thats when I ran into this error.

"ini_modifier error: ini_modifier was not set"

It was the sole content on EVERY page!

I created a new support ticket asking what it meant.
They emailed me asking me to send them a file generated by thier
troubleshooting utility. So I ran the utility, and sent them the file.
Another day passes by, this time they ask for access to the server.
I give them the access they request and the password.

It's now been a week. I have updated the ticket daily asking if
anything has been done. They are completely silent.

Tonight I decided I had enough, told them thanks for showing me what it
must be like to be a real paying customer, and asked them to close the
ticket. I'll watch and wait and see how long it is until they get back
with me, or close the ticket.

And to add insult to injury, when I emailed my sales person who said in
his initial email to me, that he would be happy to answer any questions
I may have, etc and so forth. I got my message back in seconds,
stating that the email address was incorrect, the email was sent to
mark@zend.com same as the letter was sent from, same as he said was
his email! He's supposed to be the Director of Inside Sales, but it
appears in the 5 days I took to evaluate the product he has been fired,
or re-assigned or something.

Ok well I'm not out anything but a lot of my time, however I just
wanted to warn any developers considering Zend products, that they
didn't care about me when I was supposed to be evaluating the
enterprise grade product. So I hope you have better luck!

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