an honest opinion pls - Drual or Zend Framework?

Many contributors (on the web) suggest it is difficult to 'plug-in' your own modules

I've found it very easy to make Drupal modules. Anyone with a decent background in PHP shouldn't have much trouble doing it. It'd be a bit daunting for someone who's just starting with PHP, but that's probably true for most CMSes.

because Drupal is not OOP based (yet - v7?), any module you build could break with just a few changes in Drupal core/minor upgrades

OOP wouldn't prevent that sort of thing. Drupal is careful to not break compatibility within a release - any module you build for the 6.x branch will work in the 6.x branch. It might require some fixes if you eventually moved to Drupal 7.x, but it's generally a pretty smooth transition. Plenty of warning, too.

You could look at Drupal as a publishing CMS, ZF as a web app framework - don't know if that helps.

I agree with the first post, creating modules is relatively straightforward in drupal (there is obviously a bit of learning curve involved). I cannot compare this process with Zend Framework because I have never used it but for anyone with php experience it should be quite easy to pick up. Once you're comfortable doing this then you will start to see the benefits of drupal as a framework in it's own right.

Considering how much functionality drupal provides out the box then I'd definitely recommend building on whats there already, you could spend a massive amount of time doing this from scratch.

There is plenty of support for you when creating modules for drupal:

module developers guide:
http://drupal.org/node/508

'module builder' module - provides a blank module template that saves time when creating new modules and also gives you an overview of the various drupal hooks
http://drupal.org/project/module_builder

developer module, useful when setting up new sites and debugging new modules
http://drupal.org/project/devel

Plus theres loads of support from the drupal community.

hope this helps.

I would say this really depends on the functionality and requirements of the project. Drupal is fantastic for a lot of things, but some features would be considerably easier to develop stand-alone, and I often find myself "breaking the rules" and throwing large amounts of complex logic into a dedicated template file for a particular page. Writing a module to handle the same functionality would often take 3-4 times longer - no thanks.

This is why I'm planning on getting familiar with CakePHP (which I've looked at and loved). I'm more of a "hand-coding" guy - I like the raw stuff, and not writing code to fit a particular CMS' style.

If you're comfortable (and have time) to do the site from scratch w/ Zend, and think that a lot of the functionality will require large module development, then go with Zend and save yourself a headache.

Pretty much anything can be done in Drupal, it's just a question of how much time you're willing to spend. Find the tipping point for you, and weigh the options accordingly.

Another issue is performance.

A prospect of me asks : Can Drupal handle spikes of 50,000-100,000 people per second like Zend frameworks? Or is the pefromance of Zend Frameworks better?

I would appriciate your opinion.

Amnon
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Professional: Drupal Development & Consulting
Personal: Hitech Dolphin: Regain Simple Joy :)}

I have built a full bore cms on the zend framework and am pretty biased that direction. I feel more comfortable working with OO PHP, and particularly with the MVC pattern. It does make things easier to maintain.

With that said I have been playing with Drupal more lately and am having a lot of fun.

In my opinion if you have a client that is going to want to play with things than Drupal is a great way to go. Same goes when you have a tight budget and need a lot of functionality programmed. On the other hand when you have a client that wants a system custom built around their specs then ZF is an amazing platform.

On a side note regarding performance, i have tested my zf based system with 100K+ pages and there is no lag. A lot of that has to do with their use of PDO i think.

I have asked the same question and I think I found the answer. Drupal is great and I will be using very often for quick site development but when it comes to a totally custom solution and hacking the core then a more flexible framework is required. Zend is MVC design pattern which gives you the flexibility, example , In Drupal working with the menu system to rout the function callback, working on a node tree structure, hooking the user api while trying to understand ubercart api and also not to mention hacking the theming structure such as template or function. Basically in Drupal, you have to understand how the core themes in the system works in order to produce your own theme. Else stick with the naming and structure with little understanding to the logic behind. Modifying themes in drupal is easy enough. Adding modules is also easy compared to other content management systems. However opening the database to realize how huge it is, looking at the user interface how rich it is. Drupal is best left on how it is with little hook_api and customization of themes. If you want to be a Drupal developer then learn it all. If you want to be free then choose a web framework such as zend.
Bad points against drupal in the following:
1- It is user interface oriented “general use CMS”
2- It is complex in APIs CMF
3- It has more than you need out of the box
4- If you become module ”trigger” happy then you are risking instability
5- It is not out of the box for heavy traffic and performance based website specially drupal 7
6- It is restrictive from a design pattern MVC
7- It is not coders friendly
8- Views and CCK even though they are good for GUI, they are basically an overhead from a programming point of view, example, for each field created; a table is created in the database.
Good things about Drupal
1- It can be customized easily including theming and modules once the basic structure is understood
2- It is modular system which enables the developer to pick and select the modules needed.
3- Performance and stability can be improved via hacking the api such as cache as well as using the basic admin performance from the user interface. As well as reducing the modules used to the absolute minimum
4- It is the fastest method to produce a site
5- It has ubercart and other add ons that makes it the perfect general use website example, blogs, wiki, forum, hotel + a shopping cart
Zend is by far more powerful, efficient and expandable. Example Magneto commerce, Doctrine and plenty of third parties add ons for APIs. I have just started Zend so I am not yet in the position to give the final judgement but so far so good.