[...]... companies will likely make a quick transition from PHP 4 to PHP 5 to PHP 6 To discuss what’s new in PHP 6, I’ll start with the even bigger differences between PHP 4 and 5 What Are Dynamic Web Sites? What’s new in PHP 6 Put simply, when it comes to developing dynamic Web sites, PHP is better, faster, and easier to learn than the alternatives What you get with PHP is excellent performance, a tight integration... Introduction The MySQL software consists of several pieces, including the MySQL server (mysqld, which runs and manages the databases), the MySQL client (mysql, which gives you an interface to the server), and numerous utilities for maintenance and other purposes PHP has always had good support for MySQL, and that is even more true in the most recent versions of the language MySQL has been known to handle databases... in PHP 5 involve object-oriented programming (OOP).Those changes don’t really impact this book, as OOP isn’t covered (I do so in my book PHP 5 Advanced: Visual QuickPro Guide) With respect to this book, the biggest change in PHP 5 is the addition of the Improved MySQL Extension, which is used to communicate with MySQL The Improved MySQL Extension offers many benefits over the older MySQL extension and. .. Press, 20 06) or search the Web ■ There are actually three different pairs of PHP tags Besides the formal (< ?php and ?>), there are the short tags (), and the script style ( and ) This last style is rarely used, and the formal style is recommended ■ Because I am running PHP on my own computer, you will sometimes see URLs like http://127.0.0.1:8000/first .php in this... PHP 6 is support for Unicode, which is to say that PHP can now handle characters in every language in the world This is huge, and it’s also one of the reasons it’s taken a while to release PHP 6 What this means in terms of programming is covered in Chapter 14, “Making Universal Sites.” The information in that chapter is also used in Chapter 15, “Example—Message Board.” Beyond Unicode support, PHP 6. .. as 60 ,000 tables with more than five billion rows MySQL can work with tables as large as eight million terabytes on some operating systems, generally a healthy 4 GB At the time of this writing, MySQL is on version 5. 0. 45, with versions 5. 1 and 6. 0 in development The version of MySQL you have affects what features you can use, so it’s important that you know what you’re working with For this book, MySQL. .. xiii Introduction What is MySQL? What Are Dynamic Web Sites? MySQL (www .mysql. com, Figure i.4) is the world’s most popular open-source database In fact, today MySQL is a viable competitor to the pricey goliaths such as Oracle and Microsoft’s SQL Server Like PHP, MySQL offers excellent performance, portability, and reliability, with a moderate learning curve and little to no cost MySQL is a database management... working with For this book, MySQL 5. 0. 45 was used, although you should be able to do everything in this book as long as you’re using a version of MySQL greater than 4.1 (My book MySQL: Visual QuickStart Guide goes into the more advanced and newer features of MySQL 5 that aren’t used in this book.) What Are Dynamic Web Sites? Client otherwise MySQL is used by NASA and the United States Census Bureau,... knowledge and builds upon many things taught here The MySQL book focuses almost exclusively on MySQL (there are but two chapters that use PHP) With that in mind, read the section “Is this book for you?” and see if the requirements apply If you have no programming experience at all and would prefer to be taught PHP more gingerly, my first book would be better If you are already very comfortable with PHP and. .. server as PHP (meaning the PHP interpreter will process the code) Any text outside of the PHP tags is immediately sent to the Web browser as regular HTML Along with placing PHP code within PHP tags, your PHP files must have a proper extension The extension tells the server to treat the script in a special way, namely, as a PHP page Most Web servers will use html or htm for standard HTML pages, and normally, . new in PHP 6 Because of the planned extinction of PHP 4, many users and Web hosting companies will likely make a quick transition from PHP 4 to PHP 5 to PHP 6. To discuss what’s new in PHP 6, I’ll. bigger differ- ences between PHP 4 and 5. PHP 5, like PHP 4 before it, is a major new development of this popular programming language. The most critical changes in PHP 5 involve object-oriented. . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 3 The Product Catalog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 7 The Shopping Cart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 9 Recording the Orders