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Summary: Review of Web Based Database Applications
Review: A fine work that covers all aspects of this fascinating field. The worked example of the on line wine store that runs through the book is both helpful and interesting and brings to fore the workability of the content. Great work!
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Summary: would be a great textbook
Review: A thorough and well-written cookbook for building a web shopping cart using PHP and MySQL. The authors assume some programming background but also cover fundamentals of database design and software engineering. A great choice for someone relatively new to applications programming. If you're an experienced programmer looking for a more streamlined reference manual, I recommend O'Reilly's "Programming PHP" instead.
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Summary: Great reading --- Buggy code samples.
Review: Arguably, this is the best introductory PHP + MySQL book around. The material is very readable and well organized, making the book an excellent foundation for additional detailed study. My only peeve is that some of the code samples are sloppy. For instance, Example.9-9.php does not run because $databaseName is not specified. Maybe it was the authors'intent to have the debugging effort provide part of the learning experience. Overall, though, it's a great buy.
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Summary: Excellent Tutorial style intro for Intermediate programmers.
Review: As the title indicates, this book is all about building websites powered by database applications. The book uses PHP and MySQL for a scripting language and a database technology respectively. Familiarity with programming and computers is assumed but other than that, not much else is assumed. The authors do an excellent job of explaining some of the fundamental concepts underlying database driven websites. All this is done in simple terms without too much jargon. To top it all off, a tutorial style approach is taken to illustrate how all these concepts come together. The tutorial is on building an online retail site that sells wines. The sample code used in the book can be downloaded from the publisher's website. PHP is a powerful language that is open source and that can be used in lieu of Java and .NET technologies for many web applications that aren't too complex. For most small business owners, this should suffice. I am not too sure about using it in large corporations. This is one of the most popular open source technology along with Linux and MySQL. MySQL is an open source database that can be used instead of SQL Server, Access, or Oracle. Once again, when the database application gets complex, I am not confident of its ability to handle the complexity. This is also excellent for small businesses but not large corporations. There are about 13 chapters and 5 appendices spanning 550 pages starting with an introduction to database applications and the web, continuing with an intro to PHP and MySQL, covering the main concepts behind web technologies and ending with the sample wine store application. The main concepts discussed are querying databases, writing to databases, validations on the server and client, session management, user authentication and security. The appendices handle installation, modeling and designing relational databases, managing sessions in the database tier, etc. Overall, the selection of topics is perfect for Intermediate programmers and the explanations are very detailed yet simple. This is probably one of the reasons this book is so popular. I have thoroughly enjoyed using this book and I am not surprised to see such a high quality book from this publisher. I am not familiar with the authors but I am going to keep an eye open in the future for other books by them. I felt it was a bit pricey for a book of this nature but this is the only one I could find that covered these specific topics so I am not going to complain. Enjoy creating your own database driven website!
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Summary: Kickstart your PHP & MySQL website development
Review: Coming from a VB, ASP and SQL Server background, I found this book to be very well laid out, extremely informative and easy to ramp up on PHP and MySQL.
I've 'inherited' a live ecommerce website which was written in php and mysql. My 'client' has been complaining about how terrible the performance is, how its not responsive, etc... Now using this book as my 'guide' I can clearly see that the site wasn't put together very well.
I've been asked to rewrite the site, and so as I'm developing website version 2 the existing site will run in maintenance mode, but now looking at the code and referring back to the book, me thinks with a bit of refactoring of this site, my client could keep using this site for at least another year...
Anyways I thought y'all might be interested to hear a different (though maybe off-topic) review.
Overall this book is helping me get my job done, I'm learning alot about PHP and MySQL (its a shame that MySQL doesn't have stored procedures... yet)
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Summary: New feature
Review: database application is very popular now. but how to efficiently use it? find the answer here
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Summary: An excellent introductory text
Review: For anyone first learning how to write database-backed Web applications, this is an excellent introductory self-contained text. The selection and organisation of topics, style of presentation, emphasis and writing are all excellent. The main topic lacking from its online shopping example is the issue of online payment, and hopefully this will be included in a second edition. Despite being an introduction the text goes far enough to allow readers to implement serious applications. It would make a very suitable text for an undergraduate course, though, as it lacks exercises, instructors need to invent their own application development assignments. Also, for a class inexperienced in data modelling, it would be useful to supplement the text with a wider range of examples, such as those in Wellings and Thomson, PHP and MySQL Web Development (SAMS, 2001). One reviewer here criticised the text for not going far enough, but this is unfair as it's only intended as an introduction; experienced developers would certainly need to access more advanced material. This does not detract from the value of this text to its intended readers.
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Summary: Also consider studying the source to ubbthreads
Review: For my money one of the better examples of PHP with MySQL is the source to ubbthreads by Infopop. This source code seems to be very easy to read and well written. After reading the above book which I've only flicked through briefly, you'd be well advised to study a body of work like ubbthreads. Most programmers coming fom a JSP background will easily be able to pick up the differences.
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Summary: Great Roadmap for Building Dynamic, Data-driven sites
Review: For seasoned developers, this could be the book that you wish you'd had when you started out building web database apps and data-driven sites. Keeping a copy around for reference, especially if you frequently jump back and forth between projects in different languages/environments, also might be helpful - for those occasions when you need of a quick refresher in PHP/MySQL dev. Moreover, if you find yourself in the position of having to mentor junior developers (or helping non-coder friends) tasked with building or maintaining PHP/MySQL-based sites or apps, then lending them your copy or recommending that they buy their own could save you quite a bit of time and frustration. You almost couldn't ask for a better step-by-step guide.
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Summary: Read my review
Review: I am a well versed programmer who has read many programming books by many different authors. If you are a person who learns by visual do not get this book. Here are some of the pitfalls of this book.
1. They throw globs of code at you and do not explain what any of it is doing. You have to figure it out for yourself.
2. This book is not a step by step book for beginners, you will get lost.
3. The name and the reviews fooled me. This book is not for the beginner who would like to advance into the subject of creating Dynamic web sites. If anyone knows of a good book on the subject of creating dynamic web sites using php, and that is very visual and in a step by step format please let me know.
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