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Beginning PHP and MySQL
One key to the book's success is the manner in which Gilmore approaches his subjects. The text is split neatly into three sections: the first deals exclusively with PHP and comprises the bulk of the book's content, the second section goes into depth with MySQL and the final chapters deal with PHP/MySQL integration. This layout is where the promise of appealing to such a wide range of user abilities succeeds admirably. The beginner can read cover to cover and come out of the pipe with a solid, practical knowledge of PHP, MySQL and how to combine the two to build advanced web applications. An experienced MySQL or PHP guru can skip the area of his expertise and gain much from the chapters on the other. A more advanced user can use this book as reference material, skim the chapter outline, pick and choose topics of interest and quickly find the answers they seek. Everything is cleanly written, with little or no anecdotal filler or asides. Each chapter begins with a nice overview of what will be covered and ends with a brief but concise summary.
Gilmore begins with nine chapters specific to the PHP language and its many core features and extensions, taking particular care over installation and configuration issues (platform specific instructions are included for UNIX/Linux (Mac OS X users can swim in this pool very easily) and Windows), basics (data types, variables), functions, arrays, PHP's object-oriented functionality and expressions. The next ten chapters delve deeper into PHP's file and operating system functions, web form integration, http authentication, file upload management, LDAP, session management (one of the best aspects of PHP and incredibly easy to use), Web Services (SOAP, SimpleXML extensions as well as NuSOAP and MagpieRSS -- cool stuff!), security and PHP's SQLite database extension. SQLite is an exciting multi-platform database engine that will most likely prove to be hugely popular in the near future. It's interesting to note that Apple plans to integrate SQLite into their next release of OS X, Tiger. Also of note is Gilmore's well-written chapter on PHP and LDAP. He provides an extremely competent introduction to LDAP and PHP's LDAP extension. If you work in an enterprise environment, this knowledge will become an integral part of your mindset and vocabulary.
The SQL section of the book is compact and concise. Gilmore manages to take the reader through a fast but detailed introduction to MySQL. Installation and configuration, clients (the standard set and some GUI based administration clients), table structures and security/user management are all explained with precision and an eye toward practical expectations.
Chapters 26 through 30 stand out, with an integrated approach to both PHP and SQL. This is where Gilmore pulls it all together. The reader is introduced to PHP's MySQL functionality, creating MySQL database classes, indexing and searching, transactions and importing and exporting data. There are numerous excellent real-world examples throughout this section that will enable the reader to create elegant, advanced web applications.
Gilmore removes the complexity and ambiguity inherent in many technical books and gives the reader a detailed approach to these two wildly popular open source packages. Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL will definitely serve the novice, the professional and those in between. For anyone wondering what all the fuss is about with PHP or MySQL or for anyone who has wanted that one volume that will explain it all, this is definitely the book for you. It is at once an excellent tutorial and an indispensable reference manual.
You can purchase Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Most c# books I've looked at seem to assume someone coming from a c/c++/java background. Are there any good books that make no assumptions?
I've heard really good things about mono a developers notebook but I've also read that it's not good for beginners.
This is one a day now...
If anyone knowsThis guy's got buyers lined up.
an impressive volume, both in girth and content
Funny, my last girlfriend described my penis that way too...
yes
.. bah )
php == beginner
python == fucking travesty
#!/usr/bin/perl == language of god
lisp == language of god's father
postgres == really cool and slow ( vacuum
mysql == really fast and easy to deal with
oracle == five gojillion dollars
slashdot == home of n00bs
Posted by JonKatz on 11:05 AM June 10th, 2001
from the -exploiting-the-hacker-legend-(dumbly)- dept.
Swordfish is the second stupid movie in recent months -- Antitrust was the other -- to exploit the hacker myth/legend and wrap a mindless crash-bang action film around it. The first minutes of this film are promising, a neat riff on the nature of movies and their endings. But after that, there isn't an auto smash-up or explosion that this movie doesn't love. Maybe producers think it's hip to write goofy and unrealistic hacker characters into silly films, that they will make this tired form contemporary in some way. But if there's much more of this, the term "hacker" will become as distorted a word as the media has tried to make it. SPOILAGE WARNING: Plot is discussed, no ending.
There's no particular reason for hackers to be spared the Hollywood distortion machine any more than generals or cops, but this is a particularly distasteful perversion of an idea that, to my knowledge, has yet to be captured intelligently on film. The really dramatic hacker impact on the world -- especially on technology, work, creativity, freedom -- may just get lost to the peculiar history woven by American popular culture.
Swordfish has John Travolta playing Gabriel Shear, a shadowy, omnipotent, brutal globe-trotting villain (He "isn't like us. He does whatever he wants, gets what wants, goes where he wants," is the way one character describes him.) Problem is, it's never clear what he wants, and after a few minutes, you won't really care. Mostly, he likes to blow things up.
Shear goes to an extraordinary amount of trouble to coerce Stanley (Hugh Jackman), once the world's best hacker, into working for his evil organization, whose purpose is to destroy terrorists who target Americans.
Jackman, fresh out of Leavenworth (shades of Mitnick), has been forbidden by a federal judge from ever touching a computer again. We first see him in a decidedly un-hacker context, swatting golf balls atop a trailer in rural Texas where he has been exiled with his mutt, working as a mechanic. Mostly, he pines for his daugher, taken from him by his villainous and drunken ex-wife, now shacked up in L.A. with a rich porn producer. Stanley, we learn, sacrificed himself and his family to plant a bug in the FBI's Carnivore tracking program, in a one-man crusade to protect his friend's e-mail, as he so stirringly explains. His work, grumbles FBI Agent Roberts (Don Cheadle, who seems to play a lot of sweet-hearted federal agents these days) set Carnivore back two years. The world should be so lucky.
Presumably, this explanation is supposed to make all of you seek, like and recommend this movie, since Carnivore is never explained in the film and the reference will make no sense to 99 percent of the people who go see it. You can be sure that real hackers sure won't.
Stanley, who will go to any lengths to get his kid back, abandons his dog and accepts Gabriel's offer of $10 million to hack into DEA computers, get hold of $9 billion in laundered drug money, and transfer it to Gabriel's account. For reasons that are never explained, this bloodless crime can't be accomplished without destroying half the cars in L.A. After interminable self-righteous heming and hawing, Stanley goes along, breaking into one encrypted file after another in seconds (often at gunpoint or with his daughter's life hanging in the balance) and spouting much self-righteous rhetoric about violence and whether ends justify means. To get custody of his daughter, though, he is willing to tolerate a few thousand bodies flying through the air, though he is at continuous pains to disapprove. Gabriel, can't, of course, off him, since he's the biggest bad-ass hacker on the planet, and nobody else could crack the DEA's code.
In any case, Stanley's moral objections vanish when he sees the cool equipment Shear gives him to use. Code flies. Real hackers will gag at one especially grotesque scene in which Stanley practically humps his machine while crackin
Impressive girth huh? I think I got an email or two about that somewhere.
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