MySQL/PHP Database Applications
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Spotlight Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 3.11Customer Rating: 2
Summary: Too Much Fluff
Comment: I first learned PHP from Luke Welling and Laura Thomson's excellent "PHP and MySQL Web Development," and bought 'MySQL/PHP Database Applications' to provide an alternative perspective on solving problems. Unfortunately, this book doesn't offer enough content to warrant its high price.
A full 58 pages is devoted to a PHP function reference which is a bit of a joke because PHP has one of the better online function references available. Code examples are printed with very large font again taking up more space than is necessary.
Most important, though, some of these examples are a little bit suspect.
They present a Catalog application written using Object Oriented Programming (OOP). This would have been valuable except that the classes they create are so specific that they couldn't be re-used -- basically negating the value of OOP to begin with.
They do provide a couple of examples of good and bad relational database schema, but that isn't really worth the cost of this book.
Customer Rating: 4
Summary: Yeah, it's not for the beginner...
Comment: ... and it's not for people who can't figure out which version of PHP they're running. I had no problem running the code against PHP 5. There's a /whole/ bunch to wade through, code-wise, but so far I'm liking it. There's a lot of stuff in there that I can use.
It does seem a strange to me that they'd publish a book on PHP 5 while it's still in flux, but I guess everyone's racing to be first.
Customer Rating: 1
Summary: Don't bother - CODE DOESN'T WORK!
Comment: I have now purchased just about EVERY book I can find on using PHP and NOT ONE of them is capable of being completed from beginning to end due the the HORRENDOUS editing errors in them. This book, the 2nd Edition, no less, was the last in my now enormous collection of miserable books on PHP and seemed to have some promise. I was impressed with the fact that the author or publisher included the complete set of files in order to be uploaded you a live web server and, after spending a half an hour uploading those 10 megs (REALLY!) worth of files to my server thought that I might actually be able to finally get some files to work - silly me.
So, after spending several hours trying to determine EXACTLY which files needed to be altered in order to connect to both the database (oh gosh, even the NAME of that database is kept hidden) and to change the appropriate variables contained in the huge number of files, and then trying to mess around with the bogus files that allegedly will install and make the appropriate changes to the files on the server, have just GIVEN UP. What a NIGHTMARE.
Why, oh WHY can't a publisher put out a book with the code (and easy to find and read INSTRUCTIONS) that actually WORKS?!?!?!? Spending a few billion dollars on every book ever published on PHP and not getting a single one of them to WORK is nothing less than an outrage.
No, I'm not a complete computer programming "newbie" and yes, I've spent the last several months wasting time writing to publishers regarding the ERRORS in their book (to which they ALWAYS confirm the errors but fail to post them on their non-existent errata sheets).
I've HAD it. DON'T BOTHER with this book until an errata sheet has been posted AND detailed instructions are provided on configuring the code to work on your server. It would be one thing if this and other PHP books were just a few dollars but, at a whooping $40 per book (or MORE), getting things to work should be REQUIRED! An ERRATA sheet also needs to be published AS SOON AS PROBLEMS ARE DISCOVERED.
And, as is so often the case, it appears as if this book COULD HAVE BEEN USEFUL - had the publisher had the decency to have just ONE PERSON sit down and work their way through the manuscript to find the obvious problems - that, however, is apparently asking too much.