Joomla has long been one of the most trusted MySQL providers around and the company is now looking to grow outside its own self imposed borders. Joomla has just released the 2.5 version of its content management service (CMS) that is aimed at allowing the company increase its profile both in the business and enterprise communities. This particular version of Joomla will allow the company to offer multi-database support for the Microsoft SQL Server right at launch, and it will be offering support for Oracle in the very near future.

Joomla 2.5 will also have features such as a natural language search engine and automatic delivery and notification of updates as well as new extensions. A member of Joomla’s Production Leadership Team, Andrea Tarr noted that the addition of a new database to the framework of the PHP extraction layer will allow better scalability. This is quite the jump from when Joomla was only supporting MySQL and could mean big time growth for the project in the months and years to come.

Joomla had previously committed itself to a six month release cycle and this is the first actual release since that pledge was made. Developers for the Joomla project must thank Microsoft and eBay, which both dedicated time and money to making Joomla 2.5 expand beyond the usual MySQL foundation. 

Another contributor to this project is Open Source Matters. This particular group is a non-profit that has provided legal as well as financial and management support to the Joomla project. Ryan Ozimek, president of Open Source Matters, said that his organization is finding more and more larger companies using Joomla on a regular basis.

Ozimek also noted that Joomla is a true open source project and is not under the control of one “dictator.” This is most likely the main reason that Joomla has seen more companies with a wide variety of backgrounds using the product. It is also why these diverse companies are more willing to contribute their resources. 

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