No comments about Oracle Database Ajax & PHP Web Application Development (Oracle Press).

3 comments about Rails for PHP Developers (Pragmatic Programmers).

1. This is one of the first practical books to be published that is entirely Rails 2.0 focused, but its real strength is in the terrific, direct comparisons to how to accomplish the same tasks in PHP. By directly linking specific features, functions, and other programmatic process in PHP to Rails, this book lets you learn something new (Rails) by revealing the similarities (and differences) with something you already know (PHP).
   
   The author is clearly an expert PHP programmer, and while you will certainly come away with an appreciation for the elegance and parsimony of Ruby the programming language and Rails the web application framework, the book is by no means "down on PHP." Indeed, I learned a couple of PHP tricks, that let me do a few (simple) Rails-like patterns in PHP.
   
   In all, this is a terrific book, and if you're a PHP developer interested in learning about Rails, this book is *the* way to do it.



2. Pragmatic has truly become the #1 resource on the market today for great Rails reference books and with 'Rails for PHP Developers' that tradition continues. With ~400 pages of material spread over 13 chapters, you will learn to get Ruby working with PHP and you will find that it's one relationship that is a happy one!
   
   Rails is one of the newest "hot" technologies in the marketplace and it's due to ease of use and rapid deployment. PHP has been a web technology long popular for dynamic content. If you are an existing PHP developer that is looking to add Rails support to your web app, this is a great resource to have by your side. Content is good, and the "all bells no whistles" design serves well for the reader.
   
   Easy to recommend, great to learn from.
   
   ***** RECOMMENDED



3. This book is not only an excellent guide to Ruby and Rails for PHP developers, it is, quite simply, an excellent resource on professional web development. It offers insight into how to properly manage a product and customer expectations, from the planning stages to site delivery. I cannot recommend this book enough.

2 comments about PHP Programming Solutions.

1. PHP Programming Solutions is a good general purpose reference book targeted toward intermediate-level PHP programmers. The examples are simple and complete enough that it's possible a beginner could learn PHP from the book.
   
   It is organized like a catalog, and quite frankly most of the information in it could be found by doing a simple Google search. But if you're like me, and enjoy having a book in front of you, I'd highly recommend it.
   
   Something I didn't like about the examples was the heavy reliance on the PEAR libraries. For someone who's looking only to solve the problem at hand... in PHP... this will undoubtedly be adequate. Someone interested in more detailed explanations, such that the solution may be generally applied to other languages, may be disappointed in this aspect of the book, as I was.



2. I purchesed this book hoping it would give good examples. NOT!!! Just another book for people who already know what they are doing. Now this is my opinion and this book did nothing to help explain the INCLUDE function or how to handle directories in php which is the help I was looking for.

5 comments about Practical PHP and MySQL(R): Building Eight Dynamic Web Applications (Negus Live Linux Series).

1. Hello, if anyone has this book and has the ability to get into the CD, I would greatly appreciate it if someone can forward me the example files. My email is advancedgraphics at hotmail dot com.
   
   I booted from the CD, ran through all these loading thigs, then when it's ready to run, tells me some error and from there I'm lost into script hell...
   
   The book is understandable, seen some errors, I wouldn't recomend buying this book if you are a beginner like me looking to learn php.



2. I picked this book up from the local libary and was quite excited. 70 pages later and I gave up in disgust. A great concept completely destroyed by terrible editing. The code, tables and diagrams that are provided are absolutely riddled with errors and none of the projects actually work. I guess that's one day of my life I won't get back.
   
   Avoid this book like the plague.



3. This book promises to be good. The delivery was very quick and I am looking forward to an exciting study sessions.
   
   As always, it was a Good business.
   
   Thanks a lot for this material



4. Wait for the 2nd edition. If the book had gone through a thorough tech editing (type in and run the code!) before going to the presses, this might have been a 4-star book.
   
   If you are the type of person that can learn by just looking at code and getting a broad sense of how it works, then there might still be some useful information in here for you. I learn by doing, which made typing in the buggy examples a frustrating experience. While I also learned some by debugging this book, but that is not the experience I paid for. There is no online errata for this book that I am able to find.
   
   If you just want view code without typing it in, the "Live CD" might be of use to you. The code on the CD is apparently a more debugged version of the code shown in the text of the book. The concept of booting up into Linux on a CD to do your own coding PHP and MySQL is not as useful as the publisher makes it out to be, because there is no way to easily save anything you do there.
   
   I started to do my own tech editing of the book around page 40. Here are examples of some of the types of errors you can expect:
   Page 42: Database name incorrectly referred to as "perfectproducts." Should be "productsdb."
   Page 43: Database column name incorrectly referred to as "if." Should be "id."
   Page 45: Missing steps in instructions for setting up database connection. Reader needs to set up user permissions in phpMyAdmin, and also edit code to include the new user information.
   Page 68: Table 4-2 column header should be "BLOG_ID" instead of "CAT_ID."
   Page 77-78: The sample code will output invalid HTML unless you move around where it writes out the opening and closing paragraph tags.
   Page 81: The sample code will output invalid HTML unless you move around where it writes out the closing UL tag.
   Page 99: Missing the required opening and closing PHP tags around the code that includes the footer PHP file.
   Page 100: Last paragraph should refer to adding code under the "home" link instead of the "categories" link. Instructions say to add the code inside the PHP block, but the non-bolded text above the PHP block needs to be added as well.
   
   Those were freebies. Prentice Hall, the "world's leading educational publisher" should foot the bill to edit the rest.



5. I cannot stress the fact on how much this book needs editing. I am an intermediate php programmer. I thought that this book would help me build "eight dynamic web applications" without so many errors. I bought the book with the intention to learn, not to help make corrections for the author. You cannot even get through the first application ("Chapter 4: Building a Weblog") example without encountering substantial typos. When going through the examples, I feel like i am back-tracking trying to figure out whether if I typed something wrong or if its the book that printed the material wrong.
   
   I'm actually looking on Amazon to buy another book with better reviews. I wish i looked at the reviews for this book before i bought it, I would have saved me some money.

4 comments about Building Custom PHP Extensions.

1. This is a great in-depth book for extending PHP. Clear concise examples throughout for customization and PHP extensions. A must have in any advanced programers library.



2. If you ever want or have to build your own PHP extension, there's only one serious recommendation: read this book!
   It's well written, the examples are easy to use and it's just fun working with it. Building your own extension has never been that easy.
   This book saved me weeks of research in bad commented source codes. Thanks!



3. This book will save you a lot of time if you have to implement
   a serious PHP extension for the first time. It's definitely
   worth it -- not so much because the book is so great (it is
   very good overall) -- but more because there isn't any other
   resource quite like it out there.

   Having said that, it could have had a more discussion
   of the overal environment of PHP extension programming, including:

   - how/when zvals are garbage collected (how can you verify
   you're not creating memory leaks?)
   - when zvals are created and consumed and who "owns" them
   as they are passed around between functions
   - threading issues: what are you allowed to do/not do wrt.
   threading?
   - Many PHP macros are written dangerously, e.g. they hardly
   ever use constructs like "do {..} while (0)" or extra parens.

   Obviously if you get these issues wrong you're likely to
   have some trouble - and hard to debug trouble at that.

   In other words, the first chapter is "First PHP extension"
   but an overall introductory chapter about the funny little
   world that PHP extensions live in before that would have
   been nice. But overall a great book and glad to have found it.




4. This is truly an awesome guide to writing your own PHP extensions. I would like to add, though, that the book only covers PHP4 - not PHP5.

5 comments about Smarty PHP Template Programming And Applications.

1. Smarty. The title is just as short and simple as the book itself. The first few chapters cover why you would want to use Smarty. This has always been the biggest slowdown of Smarty adoption: why use a template language? Isn't PHP already a template language? Isn't Smarty slow? What does the workflow look like? All of these questions are covered in these first few chapters. (The speed of Smarty is covered at the end in more detail, too.)
   
   After that, the rest of the book covers the actual Smarty template language. There are two main sections that teach the reader: one section for template designers and one for programmers -- just like how the Smarty homepage is set up. Basically, each section covers the exact same material that's on the Smarty homepage, only in a more logical progression. Rather than a standard reference-manual format, these sections are laid out with several real-word projects and examples.
   
   If you're new to Smarty, or have thought about learning it, I would definitely buy this book. However, if you're already familiar with the language, you really won't gain anything new here -- except printed documentation, which is always nice. Overall, Smarty is a great book for beginners.



2. If you're looking for a good book on Smarty, this one should definitely be on your list. This book takes you through every feature that Smarty offers in an easy-to-understand and practical way, with plenty of clear and concise examples to make it even easier to understand.
   
   It doesn't matter if you're a developer who wants to start using Smarty or if you're a designer who has to start working with Smarty, this book is a great resource for both and thanks to a clear division in the book it's easy to learn about Smarty as a developer or designer.
   
   There aren't many negative things to say about this book, but it isn't perfect either. Sometimes things are explained multiple times, with might cause some slight annoyance, and in some cases parts of an example aren't explained at all, which leaves you wondering what something is used for.
   
   To sum it all up, this book is certainly worth the money, and I can definitely recommend it if you're looking to get started with Smarty.



3. No need to hide it, "Smarty PHP Template Programming and Application" is an excellent book!
   
   Whether you are graphic designer or developer, this book is for you, thanks to a clear separation of the needs.
   Every step is exposed in details : installation, utility and the way to work with Smarty is clearly explained.
   You can add to this a detailed explanation of the various built-in variables and methods, differents way for managing the cache, filters and plugins,... all this makes this book a very good one, covering from he most basic to the most advanced methods.
   
   Moreover, there's a complete chapter on "website internationalization" with Smarty.
   
   To summarize, and I guess you already understood, this is an excellent book that any developer/designer who works with Smarty must read.



4. You are looking for a simple solution to separate your PHP code from the graphics of your website? You work in a team composed of coders and graphists? Then you have already thought about templating!
   
   Without a doubt, Smarty currently is the best templating engine available on the market. It is not famous for its simplicity but for its completeness.
   
   This book is on the same page as the others I had the chance to read from the same editor (Packt Publishing). It was written for a wide public (from beginners to advanced) and it covers most of the subject. Thanks to this book, you will have the ability to quickly master Smarty and to use it during all your projects without many problems.
   
   The introduction does not only handle Smarty, but rather the templating philosophy. You will also find installation walkthroughs, structural and logical Smarty internal processes.
   The main part of the book is divided into two parts. The first is directed towards designers with, for the most part, creation of Template files and usage of Smarty functions. A whole chapter is dedicated to application debugging.
   The other section is aimed at programmers, with details and explanation on each variable or method used in Smarty. This section is really useful on the long term, since you can come back to it any time.
   
   You now have all the knowledge to start templating on your own, and you won't forget the experience you gained through explanations, step by step, as well as sources illustrating these pages.
   
   You can now go further using Smarty's power by reading the following chapters about caching, plugins usage, filters and internationalization of your website.
   
   To sum up, this is a very good book for those who are interested in Smarty and very useful for those who are already using it. But watch out: Smarty is not to be used in every website. I would like to highlight, however, that its use is far too complex to be used in a static website: you will need some dynamic components to notice any improvement. Actually, Smarty needs you to learn a new language: what you know how to do in PHP most probably has a Smarty equivalent, so that you will need a transition time.
   
   [...]



5. I found this book to be a good reference if you are not already familiar with Smarty. It gives you the basics but doesn't get too involved.
   I would recommend having some PHP experience first before you buy it.
   I bought it to be used as an additional programming help guide to work with X-Cart. It's been good for that.
   Overall, it's worth the price.

5 comments about Professional PHP4 Programming.

1. In simple words - a great book. If you are looking to dive into some serious developing with PHP, this book could definitely help you find a path.

   Pros:
   - ammount of code as example
   - in depth real world case studies
   - the presentation of the book
   - programmer to programmer approach

   Could have:
   - more about XML and PHP but you could buy 'Professional PHP4 XML'.
   - more about the PHP's multimedia capabilities but again the book 'Professional PHP4 Multimedia Programming' is present.

   I am not promoting Wrox Press but they did a great job on this PHP thing. I would expect them to present something with in depth coverage of PHP and Databases.




2. In reading this book, it's clear to me that the authors don't have a clear focus on who their audience is supposed to be and what they are trying to accomplish.

   They sprinkle the book with trivial examples that don't give any "meat", concentrate on the details of what low-level functions are available, and gloss over completely how to make the best use of the features.

   This book contains a lot of information, but it is not organized to get an experienced developer up to speed on a new language, nor is it geared towards a beginning programmer who might need basic concepts explained.

   I don't know who would find this book at the "right level", but I wish I hadn't spent my money on it. I've gotten more out of the website than I got out of this book.




3. There are a lot of good concepts here but many of them are poorly explained. This book has about a dozen authors and you never are able to settle down and feel comfortable with the way any of the chapters are written. Check out Programming PHP as an alternate.



4. Having previously read Wrox's Professional ASP Programming, I tried this book, hoping for something of equal merit.

   This volume is has some decent material, but is marred by a tendecy to sloppiness.

   Firstly, as other reviewers have noted, there are too many authors (count 'em - 16!), which is unnecessary, and leads to inconsistencies in presentation. The book could quite easily have been authored by a single writer. There are only a few chapters that required specialist knowledge.

   For example, the early chapters are quite good at advising the reader on PHP settings. Since there's no option explicit in PHP,the author correctly advises the reader to increase their error setting to report unused variables. Later, however, much of the code uses uninitialised variables. This is particularly the case in the chapter on form handling, the approach to which is too crude, and uses form variables directly in code, whereas a better approach would be to capture them and process them using isset(). The isset() function isn't even covered in this chapter,but is used correctly in other chapters.

   Secondly, while the converstational tone of Wrox books is often appealing, it can also be a problem at times. The presentation is not always comprehensive enough, and Wrox authors have a tendency to give overly clever examples.

   Strangely, there's no reference section. I found some of the explanations sloppy and confusing, especially the section of session variables. (I still can't get the WAP application to work properly.)

   Thirdly, the chapter on OO design leaves the reader stranded. After a decent theoretical discussion, the writer informs the reader that there will be no code examples, as the reader now knows enough theory to work an example out for themselves! If I've paid for the book, I don't really want to have it set homework for me.

   Fourthly, there are an annoying number of errors in the code. Many of these are corrected in the online errata, but there are quite a few that aren't at present. Furthermore, some of them are not typos, but seem to be the result of misconceptions on the part of the writer. This tends to reinforce the impression that some of the authors are relatively inexperienced.

   Lastly, there are a large number of errors in the downloadable code. I suppose supplied code should be seen as a bonus, but it's poor quality control, and greatly adds to the user's annoyance.




5. I just bought this book in my local BORDERS, and I gotta say this is by far the best PHP book out there. Took me 2 hours to decide which booh to buy, and in the end, this was the best.
   Extensive professional explanations and it's well worth the money.

5 comments about Advanced PHP Programming (Developer's Library).

1. Read on if you are:
   
   - Used to PHP programming, but not a very sophisticated programmer.
   - Looking out to do more programming on a higher level.
   - Ready to read through book texts three times and to read further material that is not included in the book you buy.
   
   Schlossnagle's book is not written along one red line, it covers various topics and allows jumping around quite freely. However, the topics that it covers are highly efficient in helping you advance with your programming skills. They might not quite be what you'd expect from a PHP book, because actually Schlossnagle covers anything that is needed to work with PHP on a professional level.
   Consider this list of topics:
   
   - Write clean code
   - OO-Design Patterns
   - Project documentation
   - Performance tunings
   
   This is all not really PHP-only stuff, but it is a great source of inspiration and furthers the understanding of programming in general very much. The latter I find is necessary for everybody who's up to something bigger in PHP.
   
   The PHP examples in the book are - I have to admit - maybe sometimes rather scarce. One would like to see more applications of abstract problems, more examples. But is that what a book is for, to give examples?
   I don't think so. For me a book is mainly a source of great ideas from great programmers, anything else is available on the web.
   
   After having bought "Advanced PHP Programming" I purchased other books, the topics of which I would not have considered without reading Schlossnagle's work. I'm just about to write a diploma work and the book is a great reference for anything concerning PHP and development projects.



2. I agree with other reviewers that this is a survey or concept book. Schlossnagle is a bright php programmer but a lousy teacher. Do not buy this book if you are hoping to learn 'Advanced PHP Programming' from it. This book is too superficial in it's coverage of the many subjects. Ie: Schlossnagle's coverage of Object Oriented Programming is less than six pages (why bother?), and does not adequately cover the basics.
   
   This book is good for introducing you to things you may not have thought of before. Ie: I liked the section on exceptions but found it too brief and assumed too much. I was therefore forced to read other materials, including the official php manual, before I had a real grasp of exceptions.
   
   Larry Ullman does a much better job of explaining subjects. His PHP Advanced for the www (first edition) is an excellent book to actually learn from. Unfortunately it is a little dated and the second edition is still a couple months away.
   
   Do yourself a favor, spend your money on another book if you are intending to actually learn 'Advanced PHP Programming' from a book.



3. This is a hefty tome, weighing in at 650 pages chocked full of great information about advanced PHP programming. The book is divided into five sections each with several to many chapters. The sections are Implementation and Development Methodologies, Caching, Distributed Applications, Performance, and Extensibility. Where appropriate sample applications are developed to present a point, in other situations a higher level approach is taken.
   
   Covered within various chapters are topics like Error Handling, Unit Testing, Computational Reuse, Session Handling, Benchmarks, Profiling, and detailed information on how the Zend Engine works. While I've used or learned about several of the topics covered within, I think I learned something (whether it was a new approach, completely new information, or a refinement to what I already believed) in every single section.
   
   Ultimately, I think I will become a better PHP programmer for having read this book.
   
   I will be recommending this book to all my friends, and basically to everyone of an intermediate skill level with PHP or above. My friends are going to need to buy their own copy though, as I will not let this one out of my sight.



4. Note:
   Beginning PHP programmers will be lost. Start elsewhere.
   Intermediate PHP programmers will learn a lot regarding technical details and good coding and design practices, but not enough to advance them to the level of 'Expert PHP Programmer'.
   Expert PHP programmers should know most of the technical details found here, but they will likely learn a bit about good coding and design practices.
   
   For beginners: *
   For intermediates: ****
   For experts: **1/2
   
   I am an intermediate PHP programmer, so this book was perfect and extremely helpful for me. I can say that I was very impressed by this book for a few reasons. For one, it provides a nice overview of many useful topics (many of which are not exactly "advanced") such as object-oriented programming, error handling, templates, unit testing, caching, authentication/security, session-handling, remote procedure calls, performance analysis, and writing extensions. However, they are mostly just overviews. It gives the reader a good starting point regarding the various topics and introduces less experienced PHP programmers to the various topics which they may not have been concerned with formally. Unfortunately, even for an overview, a few of the sections were a bit too slim. Object-oriented programming was only touched on and some important topics related to object-oriented PHP were omitted. Also, remote procedure calls received so little attention that they might as well have been omitted. Other sections do a better job. The benchmarking and profiling sections were quite informative as were the sections on error handling (sort of) and unit testing. They aren't comprehensive, but I know that I personally learned quite a bit even though I eventually had to seek out additional references. Regarding the various "advanced" PHP topics, the book is basically a jack of all trades, master of none. The book deserved to either be longer, split up into more than one volume, or it should have had a smaller scope. Still, it does a good job at providing an intermediate PHP programmer with plenty of introductory information on these "advanced" topics. It won't make you an expert PHP programmer, but it will set you on the right path.
   
   There are two main reasons that I liked this book: the clarity of explanations and examples and the strong emphasis on good programming and design practice. Nowhere in this book did I ever feel close to being lost and I can say that the author does an outstanding job at describing the concepts and he chooses good, fairly simple examples. Also, good practices are strongly emphasised through this book. Unfortunately, good practices and technical details are often treated separately in many books if good practices are covered at all. Here, the author never loses sight of this. Even when he gets into the dirty details, he constantly reminds the reader that some paths to the same goal are better than others and he clearly explains why. For this reason, I would even recommend this book to expert PHP programmers who probably already know most of the technical details, although the book is most useful for intermediate PHP programmers like myself.
   
   In summary, this book is best for those who know the basics of PHP but are not yet experts. You will learn just enough technical details to prepare you for the next level even if this book won't take you to that level. Also, this book will help almost anyone write cleaner, safer, better-designed programs, expect for beginners who would not be able to follow the examples and topics.
   
   Final note: GREAT value.



5. Do not buy this book. There are so many script examples in this book that do not work, let alone there are many weak and sloppy algorithms and code logic structures the author introduced. If you already bought this book, see his script example in Chapter 13 (A Sample Authentication Implementation), try to read line by line in his Cookie class example, can you find any flaw? Well, there are many them in this tiny/simple class, but i can just ignore and pretend to think that the author did not have enough time to test his own scripts before he put them in his book...but the algorithm/logic structures of the codes that bothers me! Weak algorithm, bad code control structure can lead to a buggy application that is not easy to debug!

2 comments about PHP: The Complete Reference.

1. As a software developer, I primarily work with the ASP.NET technology and have been learning to apply Ajax to my work. A small segment of my work is with PHP/MySQL. I picked-up this book at Barnes & Noble (my Sunday library and Starbucks experience) and found the subject of Ajax to be very well explained.
   
   I purchased this book solely for the Chapters 12 and 13 coverage of Ajax and have found it to be worth the purchase price alone. I look forward to reading the rest of the book as a refresher for my PHP development.



2. This book is okay as a beginning reference. The title may give the impression that it's a book you'll want to keep on your shelf and return to frequently for years to come. That probably won't be the case for most readers who go on to write a lot of PHP, so a better title might have been "Getting Started with PHP", or something like that. The banner on the back of the book, which says "Your One-Stop Guide to Web Development with PHP", is a lot more predictive of the book's contents.
   
   It contains a lot of fluff that fills way more pages than are justified for the amount of information given, such as examples built-up in stages, leading to a lot of needlessly redundant example code. This might make sense for complex examples, but the examples in this book are all very simple, so the extra use of paper is wasteful.
   
   Personally, I don't like the author's tendency to follow his own explanations with expressions like "Not bad!", "Nice!", and "Pretty good!". I appreciate when authors use a conversational tone to some extent (Scott Meyers is the best at this, I think), but doing this constantly throughout the book goes too far for my taste. Others might enjoy this style of writing though.
   
   I would say this book seems to be targeted toward readers who are absolutely new to programming. If you're coming from any kind of programming background at all, or like to be challenged, then you might not be very satisfied with this book. One good thing is that it's so simple and the examples take up so much space, you can read the whole thing in just a few hours.
   
   I've also noticed quite a few typos, even in the example code (e.g. "close" where they meant "clone"), but I don't see an erratum posted on the McGraw-Hill website yet. I'm sure that's because the book was published only recently. The source code is all there though, as advertised. Still, it would have been nice if they'd done a better job of editing the text.
   
   Maybe the overall nature of this book is consistent with "The Complete Reference" series by McGraw-Hill. This was the first title I'd read in that series, so I had no certain expectations. In the future, I'll know better what to expect from "The Complete Reference" books.

5 comments about Beginning PHP, Apache, MySQL Web Development.

1. Worst book of all time, sorry guys and gals but whoever wrote and edited this book should buy a book themselves "Learn to Write and Edit by DUMMIES". To many typo's and script errors which did not work!
   
   Actually I would give the book a 5 star rating if they changed the name to Trouble Shooting Script Errors, Test Your Skills!



2. I used this book as a tutorial on the subject with graduate students who had only basic programming experience and we all agreed that it was a great way to get started with database-backed PHP work.



3. This book is really quite good. It's very interesting & definitely very readable. When I read it, I got straight down to business, so to speak. It gives very practical examples starting you off with making a movie review site which was very interesting! All in all, an excellent book to give you a working knowledge of PHP & MySQL.
   
   That said, there are some shortcomings.
   
   -Significant amount of typos in the code
   -Some minor parts of the code requires redoing (which I found out through a forum dedicated for the book)
   -For those of you with absolutely no experience in programming, you might find some concepts aren't covered enough in detail
   
   As I said before, overall, great book.
   
   -ive 1 star for the shortcomings.
   
   Richard



4. The authors are great PHP programmers, I have no doubt, but terrible writers. I do not recommend this book. Like most bad technical writers, they make a big production about trivial concepts, then gloss over difficult concepts without explaining them in detail.



5. Well its been on my shelf for a couple years and how I've opened it. I am on page 165 and back to Amazon to search for a book to replace it.
   The book is outdated. The forum for the book is not well visited. The support code for the book is failing images and some files. The code is written inconsistantly, different authors, and there is no mention of this or proper coding examples. Variables are created on the fly and creates some error messages with uptodate PHP. The explanations of certain things requires several readings sometimes to fill in blanks that a beginner should have explained. The use of CSS is not even mentioned so far and the html does not meet Xhtml standards. We must not forget the book was copyrighted in 2004.
   
   I have purchased "Beginning PHP and MySQL 5" by Jason Gilmore and it seems to be a resonable book but leans more towards a reference text. The search continues...
   
   Namaste,
   
   Kevin Tough