Beginning PHP4 Databases by Andrew Hill, Chris Lea, Christopher Scollo, Deepak Thomas, Harish Rawat.

Published by Wrox Press.
Sample Chapter: click here

This book aims to teach the skills necessary to develop any size web application with PHP, backed by a database. They start off with the now de facto PHP introduction and then jump head first into database fundamentals. Nearly half of this book is devoted to teaching database layout, design, and use. This is long over due in the PHP community. Too many PHP developers are creating database enabled applications that have absolutely no prior experience with databases! This book covers everything from elementary topics, such as table creation, selects, inserts, and deletes, to advanced database usage with joins, stored procedures, triggers, and cursors. While they did cover indexing, I feel that it was a bit lacking and could have used a more in depth exploration.

One pleasant surprise was that no one particular database is favored; in fact use of the database abstraction layer in PEAR is encouraged for code portability. I am encouraged by the use of PEAR in this book, as it can only help to bring the community together in its use and promote PEAR as a standard of sorts. The PEAR database abstraction layer is picked apart so that you may understand exactly how it works and be that much more efficient with using it.

At the end of this book, it offers two chapters dedicated to designing and implementing applications using a native XML database. The first of the two chapters concentrates on the fundamentals of native XML databases; what they are and how they work. The second chapter then presents a case study using Xindice.

I found this book to be very thorough and well put together. Cheers to Wrox for another fine book!

DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware.

More PHP Book Reviews Articles
More By Matt Wade

 

developerWorks - FREE Tools!

NEW! BlammoSplat: Build a community Web site of OpenLaszlo animations, Part 3: The community animation Learn to enable users to both rate existing animations and to combine existing animations into new snippets. This is the third in a series of three tutorials that chronicle the building of a site that enables collaborative discussion and animation building using Domino and OpenLaszlo. FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Evaluate IBM Rational Developer for System i V7.1 Download a free trial version of IBM Rational Developer for System i V7.1, which provides a complete development environment for traditional i5/OS application development. IBM Rational Developer for System i is a new eclipse-based workstation offering for i5/OS application development that provides a comprehensive Integrated Development Environment for edit/compile/debug of traditional RPG/COBOL/C/C++ i5/OS applications. FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Evaluate IBM Rational Software Analyzer V7.0 Download a free trial version of IBM Rational Software Analyzer Developer Edition V7.0 to identify bug defects earlier in the software development cycle. Rational Software Analyzer is an extensible software development solution that reduces the expense of bug-fixes by enabling static analysis code reviews and bug identification very early in the development cycle. FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Evaluate Rational Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) Toolkit V7.1 Visit IBM developerWorks to download a free trial of the Rational Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) Toolkit. The HATS toolkit provides a set of plug-ins for the IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform to help you easily extend your legacy applications. HATS makes your 3270 and 5250 applications available as HTML through the most popular Web browsers, while converting your host screens to a Web look and feel and it also enables you to develop new Web, portal, and rich-client applications. FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Evaluate WebSphere Extended Deployment Compute Grid V6.1 Visit IBM developerWorks to download a free trial version of WebSphere Extended Deployment Compute Grid, which lets you schedule, execute, and monitor batch jobs. Because online transaction processing and batch jobs execute simultaneously on the same server resources, you can avoid costly duplication of resources. Compute Grid supports job types of Java transactional batch, compute-intensive and a new type called "native execution", which enables non-Java workloads to run on distributed end points. FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Integrating XML into Your Enterprise Using Data Federation XML has become a common way of storing business data as flat files and many data server vendors including IBM have provided ways to store this data within relational database systems. Increasingly collections of XML files are accessed like databases using an xQuery and other XML standard mechanisms. Businesses find the need to combine the traditional tabular structured data with XML formatted data. In this webcast, you’ll learn about IBM’s WebSphere Federation Server technology, which provides users with the ability to integrate these two data formats. FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Rational Asset Manager eKit Learn how to do more with your reusable assets with the free Rational Asset Manager eKit. The eKit includes demos on how Rational Asset Manager tracks and audits your assets in order to utilize them for reuse. Plus you’ll find white papers and a Webcast that discuss the challenges of a Service Oriented Architecture and how Rational Asset Manager can provide quick and effective solutions. FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act: Web accessibility compliance Because access to government information continues to be an area of concern for many U.S. citizens with disabilities, the U.S. government enacted Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act in 2001 to ensure that government agencies create accessible Web content, enabling all citizens to access the information they need. A fully accessible Web site makes Web content accessible to all individuals, including those with disabilities, who may be accessing Web content via a variety of user agents. Common user agents include standard Web browsers, text-only browsers, assistive devices and mobile devices such as cell phones or personal digital assistants (PDAs). FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Trial download: IBM Rational Manual Tester V7.0.1 Try the latest version of IBM Rational Manual Tester V7.0.1 by downloading a free trial from IBM developerWorks. This manual test authoring and execution tool promotes test step reuse to reduce the impact of software change on testers and business analysts and addresses the needs of teams performing at least a portion of their testing manually. FREE! Go There Now!

NEW! Whitepaper: Delivering SOA solutions: service lifecycle management The unprecedented scope of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiative brings to the forefront a number of management and governance issues that were sidestepped in the past. The key to a successful SOA implementation is managing and governing activities throughout the entire SOA delivery lifecycle by ensuring that services conform to the needs of all of the business’s stakeholders. Learn how service lifecycle management allows the business to ensure that the process by which services are defined, created, tested, deployed, optimized and retired is manageable, repeatable and auditable. FREE! Go There Now!

All FREE IBM® developerWorks Tools!