Oracle PHP Magazine: Beginning PHP and Oracle from Novice to Professional Reviewed : Mobile Edition

Published on 2008-04-04 06:41:13

Apress published on August 2007 a great book on PHP and oracle by W. Jason Gilmore, and Bob Bryla. The book, with its 763 pages and 40 chapters, include a full coverage on working with PHP and oracle from novice to professional as the book title indicates. Since I'm working everyday with PHP and Oracle, I spent more time than usual to finish reading the entire book - but I defintely enjoy it.

Getting started with PHP

The first three chapters include an introduction to PHP from the programming language history, to the differences between different version of PHP 4,5 and 6, then the general language features, and why is it an excellent choice for Oracle database. Many Oracle developers don't consider the choice of PHP as a good one, or still confused between using .Net, Java, PHP or other web solutions. Getting your hands on this book will defenitely answer a lot of questions, and you can see by yourself if developing PHP and Oracle web applications is suitable for your needs.

The Second chapter is about configuring your environment on Linux and Windows platform. So you have the choice here for working on your favorite envrionment and you can make it fit with the production server. The book provides very general directives to configure PHP and Apache. No mention of Oracle until here, not even the oracle and oci extensions, or the pdo for PHP5 and later. Oracle is introduced at the chapter 26, so you probably have to jump there if you want to have the entire environment ready. What's interesting in chapter two is the recommendation for a code editor - I personaly use Notepad++ - and how to choose a hosting provider. Practical information that you need to know, especially for novice users.

In the Third chapter you will learn the PHP basics : how to create a basic web page, print dynamic content, PHP datatypes, strings, loop structures, file inclusion ... etc. All the necessary small tips that you need to know to get started. This is probably the best part of the book for beginners, because it explains clearly the PHP language, and help to get started creating small scripts before moving into the development of large web applications with oracle.

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