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| Book: | Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL | |
| Subject: | Get the book | |
| Date: | 2004-09-23 08:52:00 | |
| From: | TimP | |
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Rating:
Lane and Williams are clearly well-versed in all aspects of their subject matter and practiced wordsmiths and teachers. If you're a “non-programmer” looking to build an interactive web-site, get the book, use it, and keep it for when your goals expand. If you're an experienced programmer looking to start work in the latest Apache/MySQL/PHP environment, it spans syntax to OO design patterns you can adopt and adapt. The first problem experienced by the authors of every book of this type is that of deciding how much knowledge to assume in the reader and where to start explaining. It states clearly that “You don't need to know how to program to use this book ...” While true in fact, I think this is a tall order for a single book, although the appendix of references to other resources is very good. Consequently, there are parts of the book that will be hard going for novice developers who must absorb and apply new terms and concepts in order to work through. Less-experienced readers must necessarily pace themselves, not just fiddle with example code from the book: pause along the way to create your own experimental applications that can be embellished and refined as your knowledge builds. The information is all there for anyone, but the conceptual baggage can be a bit heavy at times. This is not a failing of the book but a fact of current technology: thoroughness requires broad knowledge (contributed by entire teams in enterprise environments) beyond the mere use of a particular language and attention to details. The authors would have been remiss if they had avoided important aspects of web application design invoked by loftier issues such as object orientation, re-usability, maintainability, data modeling, server configuration, security, etc. The book culminates in a five chapter study of the sample application, the on-line Wine Store - complicated enough to be instructive, simple enough to keep track. It was written for Linux but I had it running under WAMP in no time. The material throughout the book constantly refers forward to the application description and the application description refers back to the more formative sections of the book. These guys are good. If I was teaching a course in open source web development, this would be my text book. |
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