On May 22, 2000, PHP 4, powered by the Zend Engine 1.0, was released.[6] As of August 2008 this branch is up to version 4.4.9. PHP 4 is no longer under development nor will any security updates be released.[14][15]
On July 13, 2004, PHP 5 was released, powered by the new Zend Engine II.[6] PHP 5 included new features such as improved support for object-oriented programming, the PHP Data Objects (PDO) extension (which defines a lightweight and consistent interface for accessing databases), and numerous performance enhancements.[16] In 2008 PHP 5 became the only stable version under development. Late static binding had been missing from PHP and was added in version 5.3