Reviews for Apache, Mysql, and Php Weekend Crash Course

1. Good but slightly confusing

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, February 12th, 2004

   I picked up a copy of this book last Friday and am now (on Tuesday) about halfway through it. I can't blame it for failing to live up to the 15 hours promise, since I was quite busy with other things over the weekend.

   I'm fairly impressed with the book on the whole, but it is a bit confusing in places, and perhaps suffers from trying to cram too much into a short amount of space. Ironically, the MySQL component, the only one I have prior experience of, is the one that's been causing me the most trouble. Perhaps I'm not reading it carefully enough, but the information doesn't always seem to be set out in an especially logical manner. Particularly confusing is the fact that the author recommends avoiding special characters such as _ in database names, and then clearly contradicts himself in many of the given examples (eg. the customer_orders database set up in an early MySQL chapter). Another minor gripe is that, while there are plenty of review questions at the end of each chapter, there's not very much actual hands-on material to practice on (although I gather example databases etc. are available from the book's accompanying website).

   I'll reserve final judgement until I've finished the book. For people like me who aren't under particular pressure to learn the material and don't mind experimenting a bit, it seems to be quite a good starting point (doubtless I'll graduate to more comprehensive texts once I've picked up the elements of the technology). For people who really want to get going quickly with a minimum of fuss, I suspect it might be quite irritating.