Being new to PHP and MySQL, I really wanted a book that gave me all the details and then some. I definitely got that with Beginning PHP and MySQL 5, Second Edition. I was interested to review this book because I knew that the author, W. Jason Gilmore is an expert on the subject with over six year experience. Mr. Gilmore did not disappoint me, this is a well detailed book containing over 860 pages which are spread over 37 chapters.

This book can be broken down into three sections. The first set of chapter deals with PHP and the next with MySQL. The final set of chapters shows you have to use PHP and MySQL together to create dynamic database driven websites. With this book, you get it all.

If you are not familiar with MySQL, it is an open source database which is free. This is the reason for the popularity of MySQL. No license is needed. With PHP, you can access, read and write to the MySQL database.

As I moved through the chapters in this book, I realized that it is written very well. This book is not only for individuals who have no experience with program, but also for those who have either had experience with other languages or have some experience with PHP and MySQL. Although very detailed for advanced users, it is written to also accommodate the beginner.

With this in mind, I set out to learn PHP with this book. I’m a "Why" person. The great thing about this book is that it starts from where it all began with a history of the origins of PHP. This gave me a solid foundation to understanding the language. From there, I was ready to learn the language itself starting with installation. After installation, I moved on to syntax. Syntax is the set of allowed reserved words and possible token order in a program. Once you learn the syntax, you are off and running. After covering syntax, I moved forward into functions and the concepts of OOP (Object Oriented Programming). Most of the modern programming languages use OOP.

Once I hit Chapter 11, I moved into more of the advanced topics such as PEAR. PEAR is an acronym that stands for PHP Extension and Application Repository, which is a programming framework and distribution system for PHP code components. These chapters also cover such topics as authentication, which can be crucial for an ecommerce or secure website, networking, web services, SQLite and PDO (PHP Data Objects, a PHP extension that can be used as a database extraction layer).

Beginning in Chapter 24, I was introduced to MySQL. In the new few chapters, I learned how to install and configure MySQL. I was also introduced to database specific concepts such as data types, stored procedures, triggers, views, transactions and queries.

Finally in Chapter 26 and beyond, the author puts everything together. This is want I needed, not only to learn PHP and MySQL, but to be able to use them together for website development.

In summary, this book is easy to understand and concise. The author removes the complexity that you find on many of these types of books. The material is complete from installation of both PHP and MySQL to putting them into use. One of the many nice things about this book is the number of examples that Gilmore uses. These real world examples solidifies the concepts for the reader. Gilmore’s book can easy serve as both a learning tool, as well as, a solid reference.