Updates
Latest Tweet
What's New?
Check out for latest innovation, a computer based training video collection
Like this Page
Professional LAMP : Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP Web Development Review by Thomas Duff
Could be of interest to the right audience...
If you don't know (in which case you wouldn't be reading this in all likelihood), LAMP is an acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP5. It's the open source "software stack" used to do web development. If you have a basic grounding in all those software elements, you might be interested in the Wrox book Professional LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP5 Web Development by Jason Gerner, Elizabeth Naramore, Morgan L. Owens, Matt Warden.
Contents: What's New in PHP5?; PHP5 OOP; More Obscure PHP; Advanced MySQL; PHP Configuration; Apache Tricks; Site Security; PEAR and PECL; Code Efficiency; PHP Extensions; AJAX; Caching Engines; Content Management Systems; Language Translation; Alternative Tools; Index
As you can see from the content listing, this is a bit of a grab-bag of topics that may or may not interest you. There does seem to be some contradictory information as to who the target audience might be. Looking at the back of the book, the book is described as being for "intermediate to advanced LAMP professionals". This is backed by their visual flowchart of titles, which shows this as a high-end book for those who already know what they're doing. But in the introduction, there is a description of the book as one "for web developers with some experience who want to take their websites to the next level." This is followed by a list of basic skills that they assume, none of which are the software elements that make up LAMP. While I consider myself the target of the second description, I can tell you that this isn't a book that I could use to learn and understand LAMP. You definitely need to have a firm grasp of PHP in order to gain value from this material, as they go into new and advanced features very quickly.
Having stated the caveats, I will say the book is laid out well and would be beneficial to the right audience. There is a lot of code to use and play with, and the information is well documented. The focus is on PHP5 material, so I think that you'd find the book most valuable if you were a PHP developer looking for tricks and tips using the latest version of the software. The Linux part of LAMP is not covered much at all. It's assumed that you're using Linux to run the "AMP" part of the stack, but that's about as far as it goes. If you're looking for Linux info, you won't get much out of this book.
Recommendation? If you're firmly grounded in LAMP and you're looking for information that goes beyond the basics, you might be interested. If you're just looking to get started, you'll want to look elsewhere...