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Open Source Web Development With LAMP
Open Source Web Development with LAMP (henceforth OSWB) has a difficult goal: to teach you enough about all the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Mod_Perl/PHP) technologies that you can start developing static and dynamic websites right away. How on earth can they cover so much in one ~500 page book, you ask?
The Theory The authors do not intend to teach every little bit about the web technologies they cover. No book binding is that strong, but the reason is more subtle than that. When you try to cover everything, you lose perspective about the pros and cons of the technologies.
Instead, the authors try to teach you enough about the technologies to hit the road running, and provide you pointers to websites, man pages, and other books where you can learn the pieces they don't cover. I think the authors' words themselves describe it best -- quoting from the Introduction:
"Based on experience, we believe that 80 percent of the utility of any complicated tool is the result of knowing 20 percent of the uses of that tool, whether that tool be software, hardware, mechanical, or electronic. Swiss Army knives are excellent and versatile tools, but most of the time, you just use the blade or the screwdriver.The purpose of this book is to introduce you to that 20 percent -- the blade and the screwdriver -- that opens up the most functionality, and to make you aware of the remaining 80 percent so you can use the other tools when most appropriate."
This is the goal of the book -- a goal that I believe they fulfilled superbly.
The Authors James Lee is the lead author of OSWB. He's a Perl and Open Source trainer, programmer, hacker and who-knows-what-else at Onsight, Inc.. He's also co-author of Hacking Linux Exposed first and second editions. (./ review of HLE 2nd edition)Brent Ware, co-author of OSWB, has a PhD in Physics, has done the Dot Com thing, failed to get independently wealthy, and now gets paid to play with lasers, but would rather be climbing mountains. He was also a contributing author to Hacking Linux Exposed.
(Descriptions are based on their Bios, intuition, and unsubstantiated rumors.)
The Book- Part I: Structural
- Chapter 1: The Web Explained
- Chapter 2: Linux - the Choice of a GNU generation
These two chapters are mainly here for folks new to Web development in a Linux/Non-Microsoft environment. They do a superb job of explaining why LAMP is a good solution for both technology and monetary reasons. A great read, especially for your manager who keeps asking why you shouldn't use some proprietary development tools. It also shows you what HTTP actually looks like, and the difference between static HTML, dynamic websites, and embedded web programming languages.
- Chapter 3: Apache Webserver
Next they provide information about configuring Apache, creating password-restricted access, and other security considerations. At about 20 pages, this is fast and concise, but contains all you really need to know when setting up your Apache server.
- Chapter 4: Perl
Following the 20/80 rule, the authors manage to teach you the Perl you'll need to know in order to generate web content. They don't go into things like creating network sockets, shared memory, or the Foo::Bar::Never::Necessary module. What you do get is all the I/O, flow control, datatypes, regexps, system access, scoping, best practices (use strict, etc), and enough OO to use modules that require it. (Database access via DBI is covered later, don't worry.)
- Chapter 5: MySQL
Here they teach you to install MySQL databases, tables, and enough SQL to do what you need to do. The examples are excellent and frequently amusing. This is also where the book starts to really begin its integration of multiple technologies. We'll be referring back here later when we start programming web front-ends to MySQL databases.
- Part II: Static
- Chapter 6: WML
For those that don't know, WML is the Website Meta Language. WML allows you to create static HTML files using a very powerful suite of pre-processing, macros, eperl, and HTML shortcuts. By creating site templates, WML can manage all your links and layout, leaving you to concentrate on the content of each page. OSWB is the only book I know of that discusses WML.
- Chapter 6: WML
- Part III: Dynamic
- Chapter 7: CGI
First, the authors discuss how dynamic HTTP actually works -- GET/POST requests, variable passing, types of fields, and security implications. This will be important for all the remaining chapters of the book. The chapter then continues with a focus on perl and CGI.pm for CGI development, including a fully functional CGI/MySQL/DBI project.
- Chapter 8: mod_perl
For those who want to get more performance out of dynamic perl-created content, mod_perl is the answer. The authors explain the ways you can create mod_perl code, the differences between this and the CGI.pm environment, and then continue with a mod_perl MySQL/DBI project. This chapter is worth the cost of the book alone.
- Chapter 7: CGI
- Part IV: Embedded Languages
- Chapter 9: Server Side Includes
I think most people agree that SSI is pretty much dead, when compared to the more functional languages we have nowadays. The authors give a very complete synopsis in about 10 pages.
- Chapter 10: Embperl
- Chapter 11: Mason
- Chapter 11: PHP
If you want to use an embedded language (where the code is inside the HTML files themselves) then you're much more likely to use one of these three languages. I'd never heard of Embperl or Mason before, but they seem to be an excellent middle ground between CGI and mod_perl. They both are explained extremely well. Since they are based on Perl, much of the background was already covered in Chapter 4, so the authors concentrate on the important features, rather than the language constructs.
PHP is, of course, completely different than Perl, and thus Chapter 11 needs to teach everything from the constructs and datatypes up to database integration. Yet somehow it manages to do so with ease. It also concludes with a database-driven project ripe for you to modify for your own needs.
- Chapter 9: Server Side Includes
Short notes
Some short comments that didn't seem to fit anywhere else in this review:
- Distro: OSWB does assume a Red Hat installation for its example configurations, but does a good job of remaining distro-agnostic aside from pathnames, and letting you know the differences you're likely to face.
- Humor: Lee and Ware are funny - reading this book is really enjoyable because they are constantly weaving humor into it.
- Security: Security is discussed whenever appropriate in the book, which is not a surprise, given the authors' association with Hacking Linux Exposed.
- Omissions: The "What We Didn't Talk About" section is excellent. Most books deny what they haven't covered. OSWB tells you exactly what they haven't taught you, and point you to the places you can get more information if you need it.
- Projects: The book has many projects that let you learn and experiment with the languages directly. Each one could serve as a branching-off point for your own website's needs.
- Integration: Since OSWB covers all the technologies, you don't have constant overlap or redundancies; that lets it stay lean and tight. For example WML allows you to include perl code, but since you already learned perl in Chapter 4 the authors don't need to start from the ground up. However, they do keep introducing us to new and neat features in all their subsequent code examples.
The Website
The OSWB website at OpenSourceWebBook.com is written in the languages they discuss, and all the original source code used to build the website and the rest of the code in the book is available for download. Snippets of the code for the website is shown as examples with commentary in the book, letting you really see how everything fits together. These guys fall squarely into the practice-what-you-preach category.
The Verdict By not trying to teach every nuance and advanced feature of each of these languages and technologies fully, you actually have a much better book. At the end you have an excellent understanding of what tools are out there, and can best choose the ones you should use for a given purpose. I came away from this book and immediately used a combination of WML templates + mod_perl + MySQL to create a very robust dynamic web application using only the info in the book and a few choice man pages.
I'd recommend this book both to nitty-gritty web developers, and also to non-techies who want to be able to understand the technologies that are out there, to help create informed decisions when starting any web development project.
You can purchase Open Source Web Development With LAMP from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I can't read this book! My lamp is broken!
Is this the case for Open Source Web Development with LAMP? Since James Lee is an author on both, I'd think that'd be the case, but I don't see anything meantioned on the OSWB Book Purchasing Page.
In the store one day I was looking for a good book to get me up to speed on all the languages I'd been thumbing my nose at all this time. I came across OSWD w/LAMP, and flipping through it could tell it was just what I needed. When I noticed that it was by one of the guys who wrote Hacking Linux Exposed I knew that not only would it be useful in helping me do dynamic websites, but it would contain the security pointers I'd need to be able to do so in a secure manner.
Ironically, the day I bought it, a company scheduled an interview for me for a web development position the following day. So I read the entire book, cover to cover, in one night without the chance to actually try out the code. Nonetheless, I learned so much just from reading it without even typing a line of code that I totally smoked the interview. The interview was very technical, asking differences between the languages and pros/cons, as well as having me write code off the top of my head to do things in the different languages.
I can't recommend this book enough.
It's kind of complicated, so bear with me.. Type "www.google.com" in your address bar, type "MySQL download" in the Search box and click "I'm Feeling Lucky". If you get stuck somewhere along the way just post again.
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say. - Will Duran
Not counting the installation instructions, this book applies to any Unix machine. The authors did cover configuration in just the right amount of depth, which applies everywhere, but were brief about the installation, which is actually a good thing. I got this book for new web developers at our company. We have about 50 FreeBSD servers in our server farm that do all the web stuff, and other than the install notes in this book, every byte was applicable to us as well.
My only objection? Having a title that implies that only Linux can do this.
This is one of the better book reviews I've read on Slashdot. Kudos to Alan Eibner for putting together a clear, concise, and complete article. Note to future book reviewers: don't list the chapters and a summary of the book... try breaking down each chapter, and then the book as a whole. It seems to come out much better. :)
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
LAMP (Linux, Apache, Mod_Perl, PHP)
SOFA (Suite of Free Applications)
LEATHER (Linux Expressions Applications That Have Extensible Results)
CHAIR (Combined HURD Apache Interface Regexp)
So, with those disclaimers out of the way, here is my review of OSWB.
Open Source Development with LAMP is the perfect book to learn a wide variety of server technologies that will have you writing useful, clean, fast, and productive websites before you finish reading it.
I was one of the technical editors of this book, and was able to watch it evolve as they wrote. The authors have made a huge effort to make the book appropriate for multiple Linux distributions, and they have achieved the highest degree of technical accuracy.
OSWB covers many different technologies, some complementary, some discreet. By showing you many of the possible tools, this book lets you decide which is best for the job at hand.
The theory behind OSWB is that knowledge of 20% of a tool's capabilities will let you accomplish 80% of the tasks you face. OSWB does a superb job of giving the user a sizable introduction to webserver technologies that will be sufficient for most rojects, and tells you where you can get information for advanced needs. They have written their entire website with the exact same tools they teach you in the book, and they offer the entire source of their website for download for your investigation and reference, as well as all the samples and projects in the book itself.
The gold in this book is not just the descriptions of how the languages work, but how you can use them singly or together to create interactive websites. Their are many sample projects which let you see how everything fits together, and much of the ode can be adapted immediately to your needs. The book is extremely well integrated and organized.
I have used some of the languages described in this book, while others were completely new to me. I am definitely not a web design person, preferring to write back-end server software. However while reading OSWB, I was charged with creating a MySQL database with a customizable web interface for my alumni organization. Using only this book and a few perldoc commands, I was able to create an interactive mod_perl website in a few days.
This book offers something to everyone, even advanced web designers. If you are starting out in Web technologies, or are curious about other ways you can get the job done, this is the book for you.
Yes, the Amazon and B&N links that are on OSWB uses the same HTML as the Hacking Linux Exposed books page (and the Building Linux VPNs books page too, since you're asking.)
So by all means, go out and buy bunches of copies of Open Source Web Development with LAMP and help the Electronic Frontier Foundation at the same time. Or, if you don't like to buy online, go to your favorite book store and buy it there, and send any money you saved on shipping to the EFF yourself.
Some claim you can learn everything you need to know in 24 hours.
Clap on clap off. How long can that take to learn?
I do find that LAMP is a benefit when reading dead tree reference material, but backlighting issues sometimes cause the need to disable LAMP, relying only on the ambient from the monitor.
How about a book on using PHP with PostgreSQL? ... I know the perception of MySQL, but I don't understand it. I personally find MySQL to be much more difficult to admin/use. But that's just me. But I would recommend everyone try PostgreSQL ... just once.
repeat after me : WISA is not a WISe Alternative!
Like I'm going to trust a review about a LAMP book from someone that doesn't even know what LAMP means. Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP or Perl or Python.
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -Homer Simpson
LAMP? I used it on my FreeBSD box [...] My only objection? Having a title that implies that only Linux can do this.
Only about 8 people, including developers, use BSD. Linux has as much broader base of interest, and adding *BSD or Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/BobsBSD to the title of the book may create the illusion of complexity. This books seems more like an intro, which means that you don't want to confuse people. If you use FreeBSD, then you are smart enough to recognize that this book will work for you.
Looks like it would be a great book to use for the purpose of informing corporate managers how an open-source web architecture would function, and what its advantages are over closed source. It ties together each of the disparate aspects of the necessary open source techonologies in a way that even a manager could understand & appreciate. Would be useful as a tool for convincing management to move from a propretary closed system (ie, Windows, IIS, ASP, MSSQL || Solaris, iPlanet, JSP, Oracle || Windows, CFMX, CFML, xSQL) to LAMP.
Even as a professional web developer I cannot help but feel that books like these are, useful as they may be, totally redundant and devourers of perfectly good shelf space. The intricacies of setting up, maintaining, and administering a Linux webserver are numerous enough to warrant their own book and I suspect that one would be better suited buying a text on that particular topic and sticking to online resources for the others.
The Internet is teeming with websites full of introductory material such as this. I'm almost positive that to establish a respected computing site you are required to have an Apache and/or mod_perl tutorial; these are so unnervingly common that one would think the entire world is stuck in a cycle of endlessly installing Apache. It's a great credit to the creators that it is so easy to install and administrate that the entire process of setting up a production-ready server can be covered in a few poorly-written online tutorials. Why buy a book if your needs can be satisfied by a quick Google search?
I'll admit that the subjects of Apache and Linux administration may be too complex without a handy book, but PHP and perl? PHP's online manual is absolutely superb. No matter the size of the project or its complexity, if I have a question it will most assuredly be answered by a quick rifle through the documentation. And perl? PerlMonks is all you need. The monastery blows my mind.
I'll be the first to recommend books on operating system design, theory, and microprocessor internals, and in fact my shelves are lined with them. It is, however, the unfortunate truth that introductory material is everywhere on the Internet but getting any deeper will require a speciality textbook; that is, of course, and not very ironically, unless you're a web developer. For the shallow depths that this book plumbs, I'd recommend saving the money for a guide to webserver administration and taking a visit to http://www.php.net and http://www.perlmonks.org.
Vilk, from the ranks of the freaks
I post webpages in the dark.
sulli
RTFJ.
Phoenix, Award, or AMI ?
--jdp Maintainer of VisEmacs
is what the 'B' stands for.
--jdp Maintainer of VisEmacs
From the office of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (aka Baghdad Bob):
"No LAMPs have been looted from government offices [person seen running through streets in background with LAMP]. It is all lies! Evrything is okay!"
More at 11.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
LAMP is good, but JOLA seems to be the best mix of technologies for the corporate environment. Java is a mature programming environment already being blessed by many F500 companies. Oracle is more trusted than mySQL and Postgres. Like Java, Oracle has a proven track record and probably already has an install base at most F500 companies. Linux...this is a GREAT way to get an Open Source platform in the door. Apache, the same way. With RedHat and Oracle being G. certified...this seems to be a no brainer. The fact that Oracle has Java and Apache support, built-in, is only a HUGE plus!
If F500 companies are going to use open source, it will have to be done slowly and carefully. You and I both know that LAMP will probably do the job. My job, as an IT consultant is NOT to convince others like me that this will work. No, my job is convince some monkey-assed MBA who is more worried about SAP and the bottom line than Linux, Open Source, GNU, or any other HOT technologies.
Lessen the risk by introducing Open Source slowly. Once the Linux platform is in place, then the door becomes open.
Think JOLA over LAMP for the corporate environment!
I think Lamp is overrated, I would hold out for the O'Rielly book on BIOTCH
ms-BOB + IIS + Oracle + Tivoli + Carnivore + HP
Yeah it's the Gnu stuff that binds it all together, but GAMP just doesn't have that ring to it. And some people use PostreSQL too, but we can always slide that in under the P. ;o)
This is not an O'Reilly book!
Yeah, but, Linux is the only OS that can do LAMP. Now, maybe the trinity of open-sourced BSDs (Open, Free, Net) could do BAMP instead. But, that would be a completely different book, Open Source Development Using BAMP.
My only complant is not enough BSD books out there.
Imagine if BSD were the one in the spotlight. We might be reading a book with "BAMP" in the title. See how wrong that is? Thank your lucky stars that it's Linux and NOT BSD.
(removing tongue from cheek...)
-diggem
I typically use GAMP to mean "goofy-assed Mac problem" when testing web sites on the Macintosh platform. ;-)
Dom
Thanks for buying the book!
We didn't mean to imply that only Linux could do this stuff, but you have to admit that LAMP is a better acronym than UAMP (Unix), BAMP (BSD), BLAMP (BSD/Linux), G/LAMP (GNU/Linux), MAMP (Mac OS X) or some combinatorial subset thereof. We say in the intro that most of the book is suitable not only for Linux, but most *nix-based machines.
But hey, LAMP is good marketing, and I didn't want to spend a year working on a book called BLAMP.
No animal. No hand-tools. Must not be ORA.
Sorry to be off-topic, but this review sparked a question that has been lurking at the back of my mind for a while now.
I am in charge of all the web development for a medium-sized parachurch organization, the Willow Creek Association. I come from a hand-coded HTML background; I do most of my page edits/development in Visual InterDev. We run NT 4.0/IIS 4/ASP 3.0 on our web server.
I have relied heavily on SSIs to include header, footer, and sidebar on our web pages. I have been hearing for over a year now that SSIs are pretty much dead. Unfortunately, I have no budget for training, and I know my web skills are falling behind.
Can someone tell me what is replacing SSIs? And is hand-coding of web sites becoming hopelessly antiquated? Do you have to use something like a Dreamweaver to maintain a site these days?
Any info is appreciated. I want to do the best I can for our organization, and it's hard to stay current being a one-man show with no training budget. Thanks!
SLSIA.
Wouldn't most of the book apply to Apache on any platform? (In particular, Apache on Windows, provided mod_perl has been ported to Windows.) So perhaps it was not necessary to mention the operating system at all.
Instructions about 'how to build the Apache source code' are OS-specific, but it probably makes more sense to write a book assuming that Apache is already installed, since the procedure for installing it varies so much (rpm/deb/binary tgz/build-from-source/GNU stow/Windows installer/etc).
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
All the above items are technology neutral, and applicable, whether you are a Micro$oft or Open Source programmer, or a Java junkie.
IMHO, because of the lack of such books, we have truly terrible web coding practices out there right now. Instead of such books, we have the latest "LAMP Book Of The Week". The LAMP books are ok, but due to the web development practices presented in 97% of them, I cannot recommend to friends and colleagues.
If there is such a book out there, then let me know, because I have not seen one.
Newsfollow.com
That's where WML works - you can still keep all your window dressing in one place, you still include it automatically from your new docs, so no copy/paste problems or big hassles when you want to change the entire site - just change the included file. However WML then 'compiles' the .wml files into static .html files, so no SSI overhead. You serve "static" html that was generated via WML in a somewhat "dynamic" way. the best of both worlds.
According to the review, OSWB has a chapter on WML. I've never seen a book that covered it, and it's kind of hard to learn from scratch and the man pages, so I'd recommend you get the book. Yeah, I haven't read it, but Lee did a great job on Hacking Linux Exposed, I'm sure this is great too.
(removing tongue from cheek...)
Whose?
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
>Wouldn't most of the book apply to Apache on any platform?
I believe this to be largely true, but haven't really kept up with what's available on other non-*nix platforms (cough - Windows), so didn't want to talk out of school.
This is one of the authors responding to the question - mod up!
I don't believe for one second the emphasis was on Linux because it made for a better acronym. Why not go with "AMP" ? Sticking "Linux" on the cover just helps the publishers capitalize on the Linux buzz, which makes me immediately wary of the book.
As for LAMP, I support only first letter, L (Linux), while the rest three are for web pages. Instead I am trying to use LZPP - Linux Zope, Python, PostgreSQL, the technology that enables web application development in a scale up to web portal content management. Being free and open-source at the same time :)
P.S. BTW, with L (Linux) is not strictly required for ZPP (Zope, Python, PostgreSQL) as ZPP works exactly same way on win32, macosx, bsd and commercial unices. BSD user may call it BZPP :)
Less is more !
Very helpful. Thank you!
The whole goal of this book was to explain how to do things the right way. Unlike most other LAMP books, they do cover these issues, and do so with security and proper coding/software architecture techniques in mind.
If there is such a book out there, then let me know, because I have not seen one.
You haven't read OSWB - go get it and see what you think after actually reading it.
Of course, WML appears to be available only for Linux/Unix. Since we're a Windows shop, doesn;t look like WML is going to be an option for me.
Now here is poorly supported argument if ever I have seen one.
First off, saying that LAMP is an inferior solution because some of the folks that use it do not use it appropriately is just plain ignorant. If some folks use dynamic server side content generation when static content would do just fine, that is certainly not the fault of the underlying technology.
Second, can you please explain how LAMP is geared towards over complicating simple tasks? This statement is so vague it is meaningless so further details would be appreciated.
Can you actually provide some concrete details about how the caching architectures differ between Apache and IIS as well as specific performance statistics?
Last but not least, how is DHTML relevant to a discussion on server side architecture? Any server side technology can output DHTML if the application designers decide that is how their application is going to work.
A response from you would interesting unless of course you are just going to continue to spew more poorly reasoned and unsubstantiated garbage.
I personally am not fond of mySQL - though it's very easy to set up and maintain. Come on, a database with no subselects? (Never mind the other missing pieces, like no stored procs).
The reality is that mySQL has the larger installed base, so it it probably the best way to ease into dynamic development.
Also, what hosts even support Postgres? I run it at home, I've run it at work - on the companies' dedicated servers - but I don't know if there is a host out there that supports it. Which is too bad.
Well, at least I have a RPMs for postgres that came with RedHat 6.2, 7.1 and 7.3 (I think the postgres on the 7.x are the same, the RH 6.2 was the older postgres release).
It is definitely available.
I agree with you about the wasted trees on configuration and all that. If I took all the chapters on how to install and set up Apache from just the PHP books I have and put them together, I have a dumpster sized pile of redundant material. Ditto for mySQL installation blah blah...
HOWEVER, there is merit to having a book, as opposed to online documentation. Yes, php.net rocks. It's open in another window on my screen right now - often is.
But this is a newbie/best practices book, and that is hard to get from a Google search.
I'm virtually entirely (hmm...there's a stupid combo of words) self-taught in PHP, Perl, Cold Fusion, VB, ASP, JSP and so on...which is fine -- I like that.
At the same time, working on your own, you tend to pick up some bad habits. After you work with the language for a spell, you (hopefully...) realize the errors of your earlier days (why not just have the header and footer as includes?!? Duh!).
But a book - well written by folks knowing what they are doing (in other words, they've already made the mistakes you're going to...) - helps you past some of those bad habits.
By reading and playing with a book's code, you can glean info that will port back into your own code - and THEN php.net and Google searches make more sense.
Example: Image you're using this book and you really don't know SQL. Would you even KNOW to do a search to see the syntax of an "EXISTS" clause on Google? No. You wouldn't even know such a thing exists (pardon the pun; unintentional).
I have a buttload of books around me as I code - a few that are VERY well-thumbed - and I use the Web. Both are valid. Depends on what you're doing and what you know about what you're trying to do.
Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP.
And no, that's *not* Perl.
I wonder who got that idea at first.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
ANOTHER MySQL in 24 hours book. Zzz.
I guess it's:
1. Learn MySQL.
2. Write book about MySQL.
3. Target book to newbies (i.e. use "in 24 hours", etc.).
4. Profit.
I'm so tired of the MySQL bandwagon...
John Kerry is a Joke!
How can anybody even consider this book as being serious. I only know one or two people that even use perl for web development anymore. The only people I still see using perl are the ones that are scared to learn a new language. This book is a history book in my opinion.
Got Code?
8 is a bad estimate but parent still ain't flamebait.
This is redundant, I grant you.
If you can't see this, click here to enable sigs.
It does say on their page though that it's all written in ANSI C and Perl 5, both of which are available for Windows... Might not be too hard to get it compiled under Cygwin...
I don't get it: "The whole goal of this book was to explain how to do things the right way.".
;)
By this you mean that mod_perl (OUCH!!!)/cgi (OUCH!!!)/persistent database connections (OUCH!!!) are "doing things the right way"?
Well, if you're implying that then I agree that the title of the book is way off - it should be "developing web pages for dummies" instead.
# Scalability
cgi - no way
perl - probaly not, prove me wrong
persistent database connections - hmm, a though one - depends entirely on implementation and judging from how deply this subject is covered I would definetely say NO WAY!
# Caching
Very important to cache correctly if you want scalability and/or performance + cluster wide cache (very hard stuff for beginners)
http://www.tangosol.com/ / http://www.jboss.org -> cluster etc
# Database Independent Libraries
yep, very good to have!
# Connection Pooling
this should probably be handled by an application server anyway jboss, orion etc (or the 20 or so other java app. servers) zope - python?
# Code/HTML Separation: Templates
YES!!! no code in your view (remember MVC?)
# Modular programming & Libraries
YEP, aspected and object oriented components too.
# Web security techniques
# User Authentication methodologies
well...
# Sessions and cookies
Sessions: yes
cookies: well, if you *just* (e.g. no major persistence of state) need cookies it's probably a bad idea anyway...
Sure, the book is probably ok if it's intended for a the niché of common visual basic asp/php hackers (mind you, I know there exists qualty php code out there too - even though all these bulletinboards is suggesting "hacking")
but trying to justify that it also cover the previous mentioned areas is just plain shortsighted!
All of the above is of course IMHO
You need to check out the php caches and accelerators to see what php is capable of.
eg: The ionCube PHP Accelerator