Database Backed Web Sites: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Web Publishing by Philip Greenspun (PDF)

Description

From the creator of Travels With Samantha and The Bill Gates Wealth Clock! comes this title that Internet geeks will know well. At once a book on how to do sites the Greenspun way, and an intermediate/high end tutorial, this book shows how to implement a Relational Database backed Web site.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Some of the specific technology described in this book is a little outdated now, but the core techniques live on.Greenspun’s writing is a delight to read, and the information he shares here will provide you with the foundational knowledge on which to build a wide variety of web applications.Buy this book (or read the online version at philip.greenspun.com), follow the examples, and start building yourself (and others) great, content-filled, easy-to-use web sites.

⭐This book focuses on the goals of Web site design rather than the nuts and bolts. Although the book contains specific code fragments, it is not a coding book. Rather it is a chronicle of Greenspun’s experiences in setting up more than 50 Web sites over the years. This chronicle contains many hard-won lessons that will help prevent the reader from making similar mistakes. Greenspun has an easy-to-read writing style and a wry sense of humor. (The book has no CD ROM attached to the inside back cover but a picture of a CD ROM with the international “No” symbol overprinted. All code an more is available from Greenspun’s Web sites, as you would expect from a book about Web sites.) He also emphasizes esthetic choices and subscribes to a minimalist visual style, in the book and for Web sites, that enhance reading and make downloads as fast as possible.

⭐It would be inefficient to repeat all the glowing compliments about this book made by previous reviewers. My favorite aspect of this must-read book are the true-to-life examples that bring the esoterica of this topic to a level the rest of us can understand and enjoy. As an example of such an example, I’ve quoted this from Chapter 11, on why backups are vital: “At noon, an ugly mob of users assembles outside your office, angered by your introduction of frames and failure to include WIDTH and HEIGHT tags on IMGs. You send one of your graphic designers out to explain how ‘cool’ it looked when run off a local disk in a demo to the Vice-President. The mob stones him to death and then burns your server farm to the ground.” Need I say more?

⭐Philip Greenspun’s “Database Backed Web Sites” is an irreverent but informational and entertaining book that reads like a cross between a Dogbert management handbook and an O’Reilly manual. This book is completely unique to any technical manual I have ever read. It presents pertinent technical material in a way that is actually entertaining. This book is worth reading for any person interested in setting up a Web site (whether or not the site will include interactive database systems). It is particularly useful for technical personnel, but also contains enough high-level information to make it useful for less technical managers. This book is almost unique in the way that Mr. Greenspun gives his experience-based opinions on web tool and database manufacturers. No wishy-washy reviews exist in this book. Mr. Greenspun has case-reviewed his personal use of many of the more and less popular tools available today. Some of these reviews strongly suggest certain tools, other reviews strongly urge the reader not to use others. Mr. Greenspun is not afraid of offending manufacturers which have brought immature and ill-conceived products to market. This attribute is lacking in many of the technical magazines which exist today because the editors of these magazines cannot offend their advertisers. Because of Mr. Greenspun’s different approach to tool review and his overall description of web technology, he has built an immensely informational book. I strongly suggest “Database Backed Web Sites”.

⭐There is seemingly an endless supply of books about ‘The Web’, so it’s hard to get excited about any one in particular. Philip Greenspun’s “Database Backed Web Sites: the thinking person’s guide to web publishing”, on the other hand, is very good. As opposed to being a compendium of HTML tags and pre-made home pages “so you can be online tonight!”, the book’s aim is to make the reader aware that there’s more to the web than cute Java scripts and silly animated GIFs. The main idea is that a static web site resembles a coffee table book with pretty pictures: you look at it once or twice, then it’s just taking space. Greenspun explains how to create web sites with databases behind them to manage the content, provide interactive discussion forums where the users provide a lot of the content, and help analyze the server logs to see what your users are doing while visiting your web site. Instead of the step-by-step approach, teaching is done by case studies, which I consider a preferrable approach, since it makes the reader think and forces understanding before something can be produced. There’s plenty of light humor throughout the book, without getting too silly or distracting from the main purpose. And the book doesn’t come with a CD. This is actually a good thing, since the author makes what would be on the CD available on the Internet via FTP servers. This has the advantage that the material can be updated over time. The book includes a light discussion of Internet connectivity options, as well as a somewhat detailed description of the web server software and operating systems in use. While not complete (VMS, for example, is not mentioned), it’s impossible to be current while publishing a book. Even a monthly magazine is out of date before it hits the stand. In sum, definitely recommended reading.

⭐My copy is dog-eared. You can get the book online; I still prefer dead trees in hand. You can read the table of contents and get a feel for the book. But what is best is Greenspun’s attitude. I think his best comment is that the hard part is the design and the easy part is to “Write a couple of programs that parse the HTML forms and turn them into actual database transactions”. (pg 172) And then he provides examples of doing just this. But as I said, Greenspun has an attitude that is very refreshing.

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