While MySQL is very popular, PostgreSQL is widely considered to be the more powerful of the two open-source databases. And PostgreSQL is rapidly gaining market share large organizations are beginning to use PostgreSQL instead of Oracle; the demand for PostgreSQL training and support has increased by some accounts 50% in the last six months; and Web hosting services increasingly offer PostgreSQL along with MySQL.

PHP and PostgreSQL Advanced Web Programming focuses on the specific needs of a PostgreSQL developer and will detail how to make use of PostgreSQL's unique, advanced features to develop high-availability, fail-safe Web applications with PHP and PostgreSQL.

About the Author

Ewald Geschwinde was born on June 21, 1976 in Vienna, Austria. After primary school, he attended the high school for economics in Oberpullendorf. During this time he dealt with computers and extended the work in his favorite field while studying at the Technical University in Vienna. A few months later he started working at the computer center of CA (an Austrian bank), where he was responsible for writing data converters and network solutions for backup systems. In February 1999 he joined Synthesis, where he focused on scientifically monitoring the development of unemployment in Austria and generating reports using C, EFEU, LaTeX, and Perl. In his spare time he developed a database solution for business consultants. After focusing on Oracle databases, he left Synthesis to found Cybertec Geschwinde & Schvnig OEG—a company providing commercial support, training courses, tuning, and remote administration for PostgreSQL (www.postgresql.at) as well as LDAP (www.openldap.info).

On August 9, 1978 Hans-Jrgen Schvnig was born in Knittelfeld, a small town 125 miles southwest of Vienna. After primary school he attended a private school in Seckau. After the high school final exam, he started studying "Economics of Information" at the Technical University and the University of Vienna where he met Ewald Geschwinde. Just for fun, Hans started working on various projects and was finally employed at Synthesis (an Austrian research company focusing on forecasting the Austrian labor market), in September 1998. There he was responsible for the scientific analysis of data provided by the Austrian social security insurance (dozens of millions of records). During his time at Synthesis, he worked with Unix systems and automated text production, using EFEU, LaTeX, and Perl. In addition, he taught Unix classes in an adult education program once a week.

In the summer of 2000 Hans and Ewald left Synthesis to found Cybertec Geschwinde & Schvnig OEG (www.cybertec.at), focused entirely on PostgreSQL, LDAP, and Unix databases.