PHP 5 Release Candidate 1 Released!

Some of the key features of PHP 5 include:

The Zend Engine II with a new object model and dozens of new features.

XML support has been completely redone in PHP 5, all extensions are now focused around the excellent libxml2 library (http://www.xmlsoft.org/).

A new MySQL extension named MySQLi for developers using MySQL 4.1 and later. Additionally to a functional interface this new extension also includes an object-oriented interface and support for many of MySQL's new features such as prepared statements.

SQLite has been bundled with PHP. For more information on SQLite, please visit their website.

A brand new built-in SOAP extension for interoperability with Web Services.

A new SimpleXML extension for easily accessing and manipulating XML as PHP objects. It can also interface with the DOM extension and vice-versa.

Streams have been greatly improved, including the ability to access low-level socket operations on streams.

And lots more...

For changes since Beta 4, please consult the ChangeLog.