PHP Oracle Web Development: Data processing, Security, Caching, XML, Web Services, and Ajax | Date: 13 April 2011, 02:10
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PHP Oracle Web Development: Data processing, Security, Caching, XML, Web Services, and Ajax
By Yuli Vasiliev Publisher: Packt Publishing Number Of Pages: 396 Publication Date: 2007-08-03 ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1847193633 ISBN-13 / EAN: 9781847193636 Binding: Paperback Book Description: This practical book for PHP/Oracle developers is built around well explained, easy-to-follow example code to build robust, efficient, secure solutions covering popular current topics on using PHP with Oracle. Assuming no special skill level, experienced author Yuli Vasiliev shows how to install and configure PHP and Oracle; connect PHP to Oracle; move application business logic to Oracle; build transactional applications; use security features; improve performance with caching; employ XML features; implement SOAP web services; build Ajax-driven PHP/Oracle solutions. Building and deploying PHP applications on Oracle Database combines the power and robustness of Oracle with the easy, rapid development of open-source PHP to achieve high-performance, scalable, reliable data-driven web applications with minimal effort. Unlike some other databases, Oracle allows building the key business logic of PHP applications inside the database, moving data processing from web server to database server.Summary: A great introduction to PHP and Oracle and how they play togetherRating: 4This book consists in almost 400 pages of solid content, and is targeted at beginners-to-intermediate PHP and Oracle developers who want to learn or have a deeper understanding of the interaction of the two technologies.
The first chapters highlight the capabilities and advantages of Oracle, cover the installation and connecting procedures, and present some of the alternatives to use Oracle with PHP: using the PHP OCI8 extension directly, and with some popular database abstraction libraries like PEAR:Very HappyB, ADOdb, or PDO. A capital sin is it never mentions PEAR::MDB2 Wink
The central chapters are dedicated to data processing, transaction handling, OO programming, security and caching (also using PEAR::Cache_Lite).
The last chapters are dedicated to XML, XSLT, SOAP and AJAX, and are packed with examples which are more than enough to get you started with those features. All the code examples are laid in a plain and very easy to understand way, yet consistently suggesting some best practices from the very beginning.
The first merit of this book is it shows how you can process data with the DBMS and not just to treat the DBMS like a dumb storage system. For instance, there's a whole chapter explaining how to store, query and transform XML documents with PHP and with Oracle's internal XSLT functions, and there are many examples of STORED PROCEDUREs, TRIGGERs, transaction handling, etc.
A good part of the examples have a strong focus on security too. I found particularly interesting the explanation of alternative techniques to secure your tables, and to mask rows and columns for fine-grained access, using not only VIEWs, but also SPs, multiple schemas, PL/SQL packages, table functions and Virtual Private Database policies. On the PHP side, it goes all the way to create a custom PEAR::Auth container.
One of the most interesting paragraphs of the book describes the usage of Change Notification and notification handlers (a new feature of Oracle Database 10g Rel 2) for caching purposes.
While some of the described techniques aren't Oracle-specific and could be used with any other DBMS and it would have been nice to dive deeper into some other unique Oracle characteristics, that was probably out of scope for an introduction to PHP and Oracle, and it doesn't detract from the merits of this excellent book.
The writing style is clear, even if IMHO it could have been more concise sometimes. For instance, reading continue anticipations and wrap-ups that stress the same concept can get a bit annoying after a while: "In the next chapter we're going to see...", "This chapter covers...", "Now that you have an idea on how...", "In this chapter we've learnt how to...".
Anyway, I guess that it's in the spirit of the old adagio "repetita iuvant", and it may make sense in a technical book. My overall impression is very positive. Summary: Clear and useful bookRating: 5It's rather small, but gives a good overview of PHP, Oracle and AJAX, coupled together. There is only one project example Throughout the whole book, which is enhanced from various aspects. To be precise, they are:
Performance Optimization - views, stored subprograms, triggers, binding variables (Oracle);
caching mechanisms (PHP,Oracle) - intended to reduce amount of data transferred between database and web servers; AJAX - browser-side optimization,
Security - special database schemas coding/decoding algorithms usage(sha1, md5),
Virtual Private Database (VPD) - Oracle
Scalability/Complexity Control - object-oriented approach (PHP5 features, Oracle Object Types)
Unified Data - XML-processing data inside database/PHP server
using XML DB to implement web-service (SOAP, WSDL).
Many of these ideas are rather universal and can be applied to other database servers, web servers and script languages
I would like to emphasize that author is an expert in Oracle, he tries to move almost all business-logic to database server, use native Oracle features (some of them are implemented only in latest Oracle versions). There are also chapters devoted to general database principles (transaction features (ACID), views, stored subprograms, concurrency, views, triggers, stored subprograms) which can be very useful for novice developers. Summary: Clear and conciseRating: 5PHP Oracle Web Development by Yuli Vasiliev, to quote the front, covers data processing, security, caching, XML, Web Services and Ajax. Quite a lot for a mere 360 or so pages.
The book starts off with notes on both PHP and Oracle and describes how to obtain them both and how to get everything up and running using the PHP OCI8 extensions from Oracle. Whilst Oracle is a market leader in the big database arena, many developers will be surprised to learn that the full and unrestricted product is freely downloadable for development purposes - you only need to buy a licence for a production system. Even then, a free cut down version is available if you don't need the full bells and whistles.
So, with everything up and running, the book launches in to the subject at hand. I was immedietely impressed with the author's clear and easily read prose. Every subject is presented with just the right balance of detail with lots of additional notes and background information to help fill in any gaps. The author's real world experience shines through with sections on locking issues and coding for reusability. The section on object-orienation was particularly welcome.
I also liked the fact that the book didn't just cover the core subject of using Oracle with PHP but also covered vital related material such as various security models and a sizeable section on caching techniques. The sections on XML, Web Services via SOAP and Ajax ensure all the current must-have skills are represented. Ajax was presented via an example application which featured all the aspects you'd need including both code and style sheets but I'd have liked a bit more general advice and description here.
The bulk of the book though is the coverage of the OCI8 extentions and here you can find out how to issue a wide variety of SQL statements including using stored procedures, making use of triggers and a good section on transaction handling that didn't just show how to use them but also had useful advice on structuring your code to make best use of them. I would have liked some notes on avoiding things like SQL Injection attacks but that apart, the security section had some interesting nuggets.
The section on object-orientation warrents close inspection if you want to really leverage the power of the tools available in this development en
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