Matt Review - Dreamweaver MX: PHP Web Development - Gareth Downes-Powell, Tim Green, Bruno Mairlot – Glasshaus
I am stunned. Real deer in the headlights stuff here. I have gone through so many books in the years I have been in the business and edited about 12 of them. This has to be the best, I mean the VERY best book I have ever seen dealing with databases and web programming. If I had had this book in 1996, I would have *owned* that damned sock puppet and half the other dot coms as well. This is a MUST have book not just for PHP but for any other application server because of the excellent treatment of SQL and how to build a complex application in Dreamweaver MX.
In fact, I would recommend this book and an install of PHP and MySQL for any developer to prototype their site regardless of the final application server or database you plan to use.
On to the meat.
The good…
The good stuff starts early and goes on for the whole dang book. There is a great overview of PHP (including an explanation of the original name for PHP, Personal Home Page Tools) and MySql that is enough to get a good picture of why to use the tools together.
The first chapter also walks you trough the setup of PHP simply and correctly. I had to reformat this machine and had not reinstalled PHP before reading this book and it was a perfect reference to install and I remember it being a lot harder when I went through the instructions at the PHP.net site where I got PHP in the first place.
The chapter on MySQL was as good as the PHP install instructions. It is followed by a good overview of setting up a site in DMX so that by the end of Chapter 2, you are ready to get to work and have done a real job of setting up your app server, database, and the connections to them in Dreamweaver MX. This is about 75 pages of the 350 page book. A real investment in getting you started well.
You have built a site before or you wouldn't be looking at a book like this, but have you really *planned* a site? Not to fear if you haven't you are going to get a good overview of that as well. Tim Green, the author of this chapter covers good design and planning of the sample site, a hotel, using flowcharts and modular design. There is also a detailed explanation of the tables that you need to create for the site and how they relate to one another.
This discussion is VERY useful regardless of the app server and database you are using. The techniques here are very easy to transfer even if some of the details are different than they would be in other databases.
The chapter on manipulating the database, Chapter 6 shows through some excellent examples how to use a lot of the built in features of DMX, not only covering the usual add, update, show records, but using showif commands in detail. Something that I see users ask about often.
The Advanced SQL Usage chapter is the best in the book though. Bruno Mairlot goes through SQL in a practical sort of way, showing examples and giving reasons of why you do things. This is a real gem. This chapter alone is worth the price of admission. I think that with this and the Learn SQL in Ten Minutes book that I swear by, you are going to have all the tools that you need to do almost anything.
The remainder of the book covers hand coding in DMX, tag libraries, debugging your web app, and a number of other issues that are not well covered everywhere else. The one remaining gem in the book is the coverage in Chapter 11 of the Server Behavior Builder. Given that Dreamweaver MX does not have the breadth of functions for PHP, that is does for ColdFusion or ASP.Net, this is a really important chapter. For the user of other server models, it is still a great way to get your feet wet with this tool.
The bad…
Short section here. I tried to find things I don't like about the book and I couldn't. The worst that I can say is that the pages are pretty full and I would have liked a little more whitespace to take notes. Pretty banal point really.
Face it, there really is nothing bad here.
(It would be nice to have a CD, but the code is available at the glasshaus site.)
The review…
What can I say. This is THE book. I am going to go through this again to go over some of the Advanced SQL over the weekend. This book is a must have if you are doing dynamic sites and a must-must have if you are doing PHP and MySQL.
10 out of 10 Matts.
$39.99, ($27.99from Amazon)
7:56:21 PM
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