This book’s objective is “to provide you with an essential, one-stop guide to mastering PHP Web site development on the PC or Mac, using Dreamweaver MX 2004 as your tool of choice.” The book does a good job of reaching its goal, with the caveat that there will be more work to do before declaring yourself a master. The book teaches using examples, and an extensive case study is the culminating chapter.

First, it is important to understand what the topic of this book is. A Web page author wants to create dynamic Web pages that change based on either their user or author, or other environmental input, rather than remain static. One way to do this is to embed special instructions, scripts, in a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) page, and then communicate this input to a Web server where this script is interpreted. Based on this interpretation, the dynamic HTML page is prepared on the fly, including, perhaps, additional, customized information from a database. This HTML page is passed back to the user’s Web page.

There are a couple of accepted ways of achieving this result. One way is to write embedded scripts in PHP: hypertext preprocessor (PHP). The PHP code is placed into an HTML page by the author.

While there are alternatives to the server code and the scripting language, and even the database, this book describes only the PHP server-side scripting language. The authors choose to talk about the Apache open-source Web server, and the MySQL database. To prepare the PHP scripts, the HTML forms, and the HTML, and to tie all of this together, they chose to use Macromedia’s Dreamweaver MX 2004. Dreamweaver has many tools to assist in constructing PHP scripts, but learning some hand coding in the scripting language is also wise and necessary; some instruction is included in this book. Dreamweaver ties database functions together with forms and passing values, and can generate complex code. Using Dreamweaver, an author uses pre-prepared behaviors to drag and drop fields onto their code page. The issues for an author are knowing what Dreamweaver is capable of generating, how to request the generation, and how to build extensions to Dreamweaver’s generation capability. This book addresses these issues.

The three tools discussed--PHP, MySQL, and Dreamweaver--are very important and widely used tools in the field of dynamic Web development. While there could indeed be other legitimate choices, these are good ones to learn for professionals and students. The choices are all open source, except for Dreamweaver. An author could always achieve the resulting HTML and PHP/MySQL using TextPad or NotePad; Dreamweaver makes achieving the result much easier and, once you learn to use it, quicker.

Chapter 1 jumps right into a traditional kind of introduction to a scripting language, namely PHP. Chapter 2 similarly introduces MySQL and SQL, and chapter 3 introduces the third leg of the stool, Dreamweaver MX 2004. Chapter 4 is what could be considered a deviation; it is a fairly long chapter on Web standards in Dreamweaver. This chapter is not necessary for the main purpose of this book, but for a computer science teacher, it will be a welcome addition. Similarly, chapter 7 is on Dreamweaver extensions. These two chapters are “bonus chapters,” which some might say are unnecessary and merely make the book longer. A third chapter, “Debugging and Error Handling,” is also usually not found in a book of this nature. After reading through these chapters, I think they are not extras, but represent a significant addition to the book. These topics are often presented as afterthoughts.

The last chapter is a book in itself, at almost 120 pages. It pulls together all the pieces in an authentic case study. While the project is about a garden club, it could be adapted to many other situations. One thing the project covers is how to establish and populate a database, including one with pictures, and then how to retrieve the contents. The case study strives to serve generic uses by explaining the “whys” of design decisions.

There is also an appendix in the book that describes how to set up all of these tools so that they work, and work together. Again, some potential readers might decide that this is a waste of time, since, in many situations, others do this for you, or you can rationalize that systems engineering is not part of the job. Other readers will really appreciate this help, and do realize that it is necessary for an accurate understanding of what is going on.

The book does not include a CD. However, the source code, and a detailed table of contents, are available on the publisher’s site. There is also a place where readers can easily submit errata for the book. One of the authors, Rachel Andrew, also has an excellent Web site to support learning the topics in the book, http://www.edgeofmyseat.com, and contributes useful tutorials to http://www.DMXzone.com.

While there are many thousands of Dreamweaver users, and many hundreds of PHP users, how many are at the intersection of the two is unknown to me. There are many books on PHP, and many more on Dreamweaver, but Amazon shows only five books with titles combining the two. If you are interested in extensive detail on any of the three tools covered here, or in a PHP or MySQL reference, this book is not for you. If you are interested in a very well-rounded Web design book using these specific tools, you like learning by example, including a massive 120-page example, and you are somewhat familiar with Dreamweaver, then this book is strongly recommended.