"Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP" delivers to the readers a guided tour, which covers topics such as JavaScript libraries, Google Maps integration, Zend Framework and application design principles. In other words, it gives the reader the ability to understand and build from scratch, a full featured Web 2.0 blog application.

The review goes through each of the chapters and describes their contents and summarizes the quality of the book at the end by noting that it's really for a wide range of skill levels, not just the budding programmer.

If you really want to improve your PHP skills to be at the enterprise level, you must read this book. Despite there are several other PHP books about OOP, I have never seen a book that addresses the subject so deeply and, at the same time, keeping it simple.

The reviewer looks at what the book covers - PHP6, documentation, Phing, SPL and much more. Check out the full review for more on what the reviewer thought.

If you are already comfortable taking a project from concept to a working application this book will have little for you. If you are comfortable working with PHP, able to put together standalone tools and pages, perhaps develop a wordpress plugin but have not yet created a complete site from scratch then this may be the book that helps you "step up a gear".

He mentions the application that he book helps you develop (a blogging platform) and goes through a summary of each chapter with opinions on each. He also points to a sample chapter if you'd like an idea of what the book is like.

This book is absolutely jam-packed with information useful to the medium-advanced PHP coder. SPL is described over a few chapters, and a quick intro to Zend's MVC framework is provided. Of particular interest to me were the final chapters, to do with certificate-based authentication, and a chapter near the beginning describing the upcoming features of PHP6. Great book - I really enjoyed it.

The review gets into detail on some of the chapters and some of the shortfalls that Kae saw about them. Things like:

• The title says "frameworks" but only one is really discussed (Zend Framework)
• The testing/continuous development sections weren't long enough
• The "web 2.0" section was a little sparse
• The only real web service protocol talked about is SOAP.

Overall, though Kae found the book to be worthy of a place on any developer's shelf.

First I think it's important to cover the valuable aspects of the book as that will really drive your decision whether the book is worth a read. If you are new to object oriented programming and basic design patterns you will get a fairly good introduction of how to do both in PHP.

He points out some of his favorite parts of the book - the chapter on exceptions, chapter three covering the Standard PHP library - and some of the things he thought could be improved like the order of the parts of the book (4 should be after 1) and his disappointment in the lack of security/scalability/performance topics.

Published in August 2007, Beginning PHP and Oracle: From Novice to Professional weighs in at a hefty 763 pages long. It's one for the bookshelf, not for the backpack thats for sure!

He goes through the sections of the book - the PHP intro, some of its "Enterprise thinking", mentions of MySQL and SQLite and, of course, the large amount of Oracle content (both in using Oracle alone and in connecting the two together).

If you're in the market for a book to perhaps learn PHP and would like to move onto advanced concepts later on, this book is worth a look. If you're an experienced PHP developer and looking for an introduction into the world of Oracle, this is the book for you.

While being an easy read, this is a well written, serious book and is aimed squarely at enterprise-level developers and software engineers who make their living through the development and architecture of solutions developed in PHP.

He breaks down the book into the three sections its title mentions - working with objects, design patterns and a healthy dose of PEAR, phpDocumentor, PHPUnit, CVS and phing.

In short: a very good concise introduction to OOP. I'll be keeping this on my desk for a while. The language use is strange but the code examples and the spread of topics make up for that in spades. This book has a very broad scope, but is clear in the essentials. If you're looking for an introduction to Objected Oriented Programming in PHP, I'd recommend this one.

The review gets into a bit more detail on "The Good", "The Bad" and "The Ugly" of its contents including its intro to OOP in PHP (good), the assumption that OOP is better than other programming types (bad) and the poor structure of the book (the ugly).

Walking through your local bookstore will show that there is definitely no shortage of books related to PHP and MySQL. These ubiquitous technologies have been many a beginner's foray into the world of web development. Since both are free and widely supported it's a safe bet that the software you create can be used in almost any circumstance with relative ease. Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional, Third Edition is a good resource to get you started on your way.

The reviewer breaks down the chapters of the book and points out two chapters (web services and MVC with the Zend Framework) that he though were noteworthy for budding developers to look in to.

All in all W. Jason Gilmore has done an excellent job of bringing a wide ranging topics into a manageable size and retaining much of the value for later use.

As the title suggests this book is about advanced PHP related topics, being divided into 5 parts and 21 chapters. The title enunciates the book will cover many different aspects, but you'll get disappointed as soon as you perceive it's only about 300 pages.

He jumps right in to the contents of the book - chapters on patterns, testing, documentation, the SPL, etc. His overall impression of the book was a good one, though, despite it trying to cover such a wide range of topics in "only about 300 pages".