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Professional Apache 2.0
Although Apache changed a great deal in its version 2.0, it is a credit to the Apache folk that the config files and command line options have basically remained the same for sys admins. For this reason, the book seems to include a lot of material (CGI security, building, core modules) from the original book. However, a closer look reveals many changes. Almost every chapter includes a discussion about how features differ in both versions of Apache. The book does a good job of giving an overview of Apache's architectural changes and how the use of multi-processing modules (MPM) allow the admin to choose an optimal implementation of apache. This edition, noticeably bigger than the previous one, contains many more examples of how one can extend apache functionality (configuring for binary distribution, setting up virtual interfaces, load sharing). Many sections have been expanded. The discussion of security and SSL is more detailed, yet more succinct; so is the section on content negotiation, (which is twice as long as the previous book), doing proxy server configurations, rsync and benchmarking performance. The discussion on hardening the server was great and up-to-date, although I wish the book spent more time discussing on patching and upgrading.
What is new to the book? We find a longer discussion of graphic administration tools for Windows and Unix, including webmin (which actually I wanted more of). We also have discussions of newer modules such as mod_ruby, mod_python, mod_dav as well as a brief description on how to install tomcat alongside apache. The discussion of mod_dav was especially helpful and interesting to me (and I was especially glad that the author acknowledged the Subversion DAV module, something which is bound to become more important). The php stuff hasn't changed much (although at the time the book was published, 2.0 compatibility with PHP was still an iffy proposition). The book's discussion of mod_perl isn't significantly different, although it does point out migration issues and some additional features.
Generally, the book is clearly written and contains enough examples to find any configuration you want. A few parts required rereading (especially the part about proxies and proxypasses), and occasionally I needed a better explanation of what the example code was supposed to do.
No book can be everything for everybody, and nobody can accuse the book of not having enough content (it is after all more than 700 pages!). I found myself wishing for other things. The book briefly discussed 2.0's support for ipv6, but I longed for a fuller explanation and a more detailed example (Fortunately, I had seen a good ipv6 tutorial on Linux Journal ). Also, I would have liked more information about other web application servers (like zope that Apache sometimes coexists with, content frameworks (such as cocoon) and other goodies produced by the Apache Foundation. The author might legitimately feel that such subjects lie outside the book's scope, but such topics are becoming more important.
In summary: for newbies who are looking for a guide to start with: this is the definitive book to read. It's definitive and a little imposing, but it is well written and logically arranged.
For people already familiar with Apache 1.3 but looking for more depth about ipv6, php, content frameworks or Tomcat, it might be better to read books on those specific subjects instead of this one. Indeed, Wrox will soon be coming out with a book specifically on Apache and Tomcat.
For experienced system administrators, the material in this book may not be terribly new, but they will still appreciate the variety of configuration examples for managing large numbers of virtual hosts and the convenience of having documentation of the 1.3/2.0 differences at their fingertips.
You can purchase Professional Apache 2.0 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The font of the main text was difficult to read after a long day's VDU-gazing. More importantly, some explanations are not expressed clearly enough to allow the meaning to sink in without the occasional paragraph re-read, and some sections could benefit from diagrams to illustrate the points.
ApacheWeek also has a review of this book found here, link
Perhaps, perhaps not. I don't see the moderator point, though.
Anyway, I'd say the Professional Apache is Stronghold.
Not because of any feature because it *is* Apache but because of its support.
Many geeks won't need this but mostcorporations includign the one I work for actually require such software to be properly marketed and supported.
"Properly" stands here for "using a proper contract".
Trolling using another account since 2005.
A couple of years ago I get an interesting e-mail from an "author agent" from Wrox. They were looking to publish a book about Perl and asked if I was interested.
No, not in writing the book -- in writing a chapter. Apparently they go out and find programmers off the Internet to each write a chapter of the book. Well, I thought that was a strange way to run a railroad, but what the hell. I asked her about the compensation package.
$1000. Plus $1000 as an "on-time" bonus. No royalties.
Well, that totally sucked. And on top of that, the deadline was like two weeks away! So I was supposed to write a quality chapter (presumably with lots of tested examples) in two weeks. For $2,000. Yeah right. That's going to produce a quality product.
Ever since then, I've never gone near Wrox books. This one might be different, but screw them. I don't trust them at all.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Okay, I tried to resist, but I've got to answer this ...
I really, really hate the "academia vs. real world" dichotomy that a lot of techies try to set up. Yes, business programming problems are different from classroom programming problems. Yes, academics develop a lot of ideas about programming that seem brilliant in a theoretical context but prove pretty much impossible to implement in production shops. Yes, there are shitty CS profs out there who don't keep up on the latest developments in the field and fill their students' heads with ideas that are outdated, impractical, or just plain wrong.
But. There is at least as much of a problem with "real-world" programmers and admins, many of whom are mostly self-taught and therefore have no idea where the gaps in their knowledge are, who really ought to pay more attention to academic computer science. A lot of the code I have to work with as a DBA and Web developer is, frankly, astonishingly bad. Yeah, it gets the job done, but the fact is that it would get it done a lot better if it were written by people who had some exposure to the theoretical underpinnings of CS like set theory and algorithm analysis -- and, just as importantly, to the people who develop those underpinnings.
The vast majority of the whiz-bang technologies that make computers as useful as they are came out of university labs -- not corporate R&D shops that are all "D" and no "R," not teenage genius hackers in their basements, and sure as hell not people who think that academia and the real world are somehow two separate domains, never the twain shall meet.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I thought JSP, Servlets and MySQL had some good JSP and MySQL content in it.
If you're looking to learn PHP, you should check out the documentation on PHP.net.
If you want to learn ASP, try Planet Source Code.
Step one is to decide on the platform and language you want to learn first. They all have their advantages and disadvantages.
And here I thought Microsoft Windows was the primary application that drives people to Linux and open source...
I've met quite a few people who have written OReilly books (the **whole** book) so this doesn't seem to be the case. YMMV.
Thanks for the heads up on Wrox -- I never bought them anyway, but now at least I have a reason not to...
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Uh huh, sure... Watch out on the "most" label. I know of two Fortune 20 corps that use the apache.org version of Apache, and are really annoyed by the fact that Covalent has shifted their focus to supporting only Covalent-supplied versions of Apache.
:)
Although I totally understand Covalent's point of view - they were killing themselves trying to provide support for any weirdly compiled/strangely hacked version of the apache.org source.
Covalent's Raven smokes StrongHold for a pre-built and "properly marketed" Apache distro. Most of the Apache developers are employed by Covalent, and Covalent funds a LOT of the ongoing Apache development.
No, I'm not employed by, or have any financial interested in Covalent, just have been massively impressed with their service and support. We ask for on-site Apache training, they send Ryan Bloom. We look at their Raven package, and they send Dirk-Willem Van Gulik. It's like asking for Linux training and getting Linus fucking Torvalds!
I can comment on this having written material for two of WROX's books (never you mind which ones)...
You are correct in that they prefer "multi-author" books. This achieves a couple of things. First, the book is turned out in a much shorter amount of time. This is a legitimate business model, one that adheres to time-to-market and competitiveness. Of course, it takes a very good editor to manage multiple authors and to coordinate their activities. I wish that I could say that my editor was one of them. Sadly, s/he was not. There was *zero* communication between the authors and, in fact, we didn't even know who the other authors were until we got close to publication time. As a result, we also did not know what was being included in the book. This was unfortunate since it would have resulted in a better product overall. In spite of that, however, the book was very well received and sold quite a bit.
The advantage of the multi-author approach is that it provides us as authors with more time to focus on a particular topic. Furthermore, each author can be picked for their relative area of expertise and right on that. So, for example, with a book on J2EE, the person writing on JMS should be more knowledgeable than the person writing on EJB. Similarly, a person writing about Servlets may not know as much about LDAP. Having each author focus on one or a few topics will (hopefully) provide a better treatment of each topic.
From the perspective of royalties, Wrox isn't all that bad. If you write a single chapter, you get paid $1,000. That might not sound like much but no one writes technical books with the hope of getting rich. Not on royalties, at least. You make it up on the "bragging rights" when you go on a job interview. Although, be warned that in the current economy, this can backfire on you. Many authors, myself included, have had a difficult time finding work because many recruiters assume that our rates will be to high since we are published. So, they don't even bother to ask. Once I removed the book credits (and articles and lectures and....) I started getting a lot of offers.
If you write more than one chapter, you get a cut of the royalties. Wrox pays 10% of the sale price (less returns) as a royaly. This 10% gets split among all of the authors who are participating in royalties (this list does not include those who got paid a set fee). Thus, if a book has 10 authors splitting the royalties, you will get 1% of the sale price. If a book sales at $35, that means that you're getting a whopping 35 cents per book. Less taxes. Like I said, no one writes these things to get rich.
The sad reality of all of this is that you don't end up seeing much money as a result of your efforts. I have received pretty much zilch for my contributions. The only saving grace is that royalty-based authors get a (small) advance.
One major complaint that I have against Wrox is that they treat your work as a "Right-to-hire." Work that I did for one book has since been used in others, with nothing paid to me save a small credit inside. This is akin to musicians not being paid for when their music appears on one of those compilation CD's.
I love the idea of writing a book. I very much would like to do it again. However, I would not do it again with Wrox. If you are an aspiring author, I would strongly suggest O'Reilly or A!Press, both of whom have very solid track records with their author-relationships.
Wrox, my love....you helped me realize a life-long dream and for that I am ever thankful. But like my first real girlfriend, you may have popped my cherry, but you're not the one that I'm going to be spending the rest of my life with.
To the moderator: do not jump to moderate as flamebait until you have read it till the end please. As a person who have worked both in Academia (in more than one country) and in Corp (once again in more than one country) I have to say that you are deeply mistaken.
Excuse me for the engineering language but current academic CS is mostly full of shit. It is mostly a collection of people who excel in vendor and sponsor nasoanal relationships. Especially the latter.
What you describe is not CS. It is good old MATH. And what makes most programmers write shitty code is lack of solid background in mathematics. The subjects you have mentioned like set theory are just a scratch on surface. Game theory, optimisation, numerical methods, to be continued ad naseum.
I will also disagree with some of your conclusions on selftaught as synonimous with lacking. A selftaught programmer coming from a mathematical, physical or even chemical background is often a better programmer then the surrogate CS engineers printed in some countries which have cut down their math requirements for CS to almost nothing. And which do not have any of the subjects mentioned in their BSc programmes for most colleges.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Well, I do consider CS a branch of applied mathematics, actually. And so do most of the decent CS academics I know. I'm sorry if you've had experience with a bunch of bad ones. I certainly agree with you that more programmers need more math. (Having been a math major and a CS minor, I could scarcely argue otherwise.)
I don't think self-teaching is a bad thing. But -- and this is an important but -- one thing most of the self-taught people in any field don't know is, well, what they don't know. They may no just as much or more than people with formal training, but almost invariably there are huge gaps in their knowledge and they simply don't know those gaps are there. If they come from a (decent) academic background, they'll know where the gaps are and how, if necessary, to go about filling them.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.