Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: A place to start and return often
Comment: If you are a new web developer this is a survey course in what you need to know. Unfortunately if are a new web developer you probably won't get 3/4rs of what Henderson has to say. He doesn't really get into detail with any single topic in the book... leaving it to the reader to find more information later. None the less, no matter where you are on the learning curve, I consider this a vital part of any developer's library. Buy this tomb, read it in chunks if you're new and if not reread chapters at a time for inspiration of what you could be doing better.
Customer Rating:
Summary: VERY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
Comment: Do you have just a little experience with building dynamic web sites or applications? If you are, then this book is for you. Author Cal Henderson, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that is primarily about web application design.
Henderson, begins by looking at some general software design principles for web applications and how they apply to real world problems. Then, the author gets you quickly up to speed with the issues involved with internationalization and localization, and suggests simple ways to solve them. Next, he deals with the integrity of the data received and stored by your application. He also looks at what receiving e-mail can add to an application, how to implement e-mail receiving semantics, and the various pitfalls that occur along the way. The author then continues by dealing with protocols, formats, and strategies for exchanging data between two or more components in a web application. Then, he looks at techniques for identifying and fixing bottlenecks in your architecture, both before they happen and when they start to bog your systems down. Finally, the author looks at the techniques for scaling each area of your application.
This most excellent book looks at application architecture, development practices, technologies, Unicode, and general infrastructural work. Perhaps more importantly, this book is about the development of web applications.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Best Advanced Web Apps Book. Ever
Comment: This book, written by the lead developer of always-popular and it is quite possibly the best book (from a PHP/MySQL web app developer's perspective) ever written. If all of this knowledge comes direct from Cal Henderson's head then he's clearly a *very* clever guy.
Covering everything from basic MVC concepts, bottle-neck analysis, code profiling and coding style through to network design, protocol choice and security, this book is really quite amazing in how much useful information it manages to pack into such a deceptively small book. I found myself highlighting large portions of entire pages and then realized that there wasn't much point because the whole thing deserved highlighting.
If you're using PHP and MySQL (in particular) to build web-based applications that might one day serve more than a couple people - you should get this book and read it cover to cover.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Must Have: no two ways about it
Comment: I am the CEO of an Internet company out of India. We have several properties, 2 of them ranking in the leading websites of the world. I have always struggled with software professionals who would take too long and raise too many bills for developing our online applications. I did not know how to fight them, I just had to listen to them.
Until I got this book.
This book will guide the well informed management executive what web development is all about. How much documentation is required. What tools are required. What influences software design...so you can fight back.
I then gave it to my head of engineering. He gave me a dirty look. A week later he was touching my feet. The book opened his eyes. I think I am about to see a huge change in our software output soon...
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A recommended read if you're new to production level engineering
Comment: My development experience comes from university projects -- where you are often given a framework to work within and issues like security or real world performance are out of scope.
I thought this book provides a very nice intuition behind a number of modules -- abstraction layers, coding practices, keeping a database clean, monitoring a site, etc and connects the dots between them.
If any one particular area is of specific importance to you, you will probably need to get the deep details from another book or more likely a series of online documentation and websites. In my opinion though, this book covers what a physical book should -- enough to turn the lightbulb on in your head and show you some examples.
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