According to the TIOBE Programming Community Index, PHP is the most popular programming language after C/C++ and Java.1 Gartner predicts that dynamic programming languages will be critical to the success of many next-generation application development efforts and sees PHP as one of the strongest representatives of this type of...

If you’re an application programmer you’ve probably run into a relational database at some point in your professional career. Whether you’re writing enterprise client-server applications or building the next Web 2.0 killer application, you need someplace to put the persistent data for your application, and relational...

i FirSt StArted plAying With the Android Sdk before it was offi cially released as version 1.0. Back then, the tools were unpolished, the APIs in the SDK were unstable, and the documentation was sparse. Fast forward two and a half years, Android is now a formidable mobile operating system, with a following no less impressive than the...

In the fall of 2004, at a popular software conference I realized how all major component vendors were advertising their ASP.NET products using a new word—Ajax. Only a few weeks later, a brand new module in my popular ASP.NET master class made its debut—using Ajax to improve the user experience. At its core, Ajax is a little...

Ever since the late 1990s when Java servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSPs) came into widespread use, web site developers have been switching from CGI scripting languages to servlets and JSPs. As a result, there has been tremendous growth in the use of servlets and JSPs. Today, there's little doubt that scrvlet and JSP technology is here to...

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the next version of the protocol that is used for communication among devices of all types on the Internet. IPv6 has been in existence for many years, but recently the deployment of IPv6 has accelerated greatly in the enterprise. IPv6 has been under continuous development and is maturing as real-world...

Apache Wicket is one of the most famous Java web application frameworks. Wicket simplifies web development and makes it fun. Are you bored of going through countless pages of theory to find out how to get your web development done? With this book in hand, you don't need to go through hundreds of pages to figure out how you will actually...

Evolving fuzzy systems (EFS) are a powerful tool...

Advances in medical technology force us to struggle with new and often gut-wrenching decisions. How do we know when someone is dead and not just in a coma? Should a convicted felon qualify for a new heart? In The Woman Who Decided to Die, novelist and medical ethicist Ronald Munson takes readers to the very edges of medicine, where...

Late in 2004 I received a telephone call from Hélène Potter, director of new product development for Macmillan Reference USA—an imprint of Gale. I did not realize immediately that it was the telephone call that would shape a large share of my intellectual activity for the next three years. In fact, I recall hearing about a...

Practically next door to us in our Solar System, Mars is the most Earth-like of all the worlds held in perpetual motion by the Sun’s gravity. It is a planet that has fascinated and intrigued humans since prehistoric times. The Greeks named it Ares, after their god of war. The connection was easy to make because of the planet’s...