php|architect's Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide | 
| Authors: Davey Shafik, Ben Ramsey
Publisher: Marco Tabini & Associates, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $32.99
Buy New: $29.69
You Save: $3.30 (10%)
New (15) Used (8) from $28.09
Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 425875
Media: Paperback
Pages: 292
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0973862149
EAN: 9780973862140
ASIN: 0973862149
Publication Date: October 5, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Zend's new PHP 5 Certification Exam represent an excellent tool for professional PHP developers who want to distinguish themselves in their field. php|architect's Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide, edited and produced by the publishers of php|architect magazine, provides the most comprehensive and thorough preparation tool for developers who wish to take the exam. This book provides complete coverage of every topic that is part of the exam, including: ? PHP Basics ? Functions ? Arrays ? Strings and Patterns ? Web Programming ? Object Oriented Programming ? Database Programming ? Object-oriented Design ? XML and Web Services ? Security ? Streams and Network Programming ? Differences Between PHP 4 and 5 Written by PHP professionals and Zend Certified PHP 5 Engineers Davey Shafik and Ben Ramsey, and reviewed by core PHP developer Derick Rethans, this is the perfect book for every prospective Zend Certified PHP Engineer candidate!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Good overview, but poor exam prep October 8, 2008
John M. Stokes
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've been programming with PHP professionally for just a year. This book was a good introduction to some concepts I hadn't encountered in my day-to-day work yet, but little more. After reading this book twice, supplementing it with information from the PHP online manual, and passing their practice exams three times in a row, I still failed the exam.
This book doesn't even cover all the topics presented on their practice exams, much less the actual Zend exam. It's riddled with typos (even some in the code, which I consider unforgivable), has no practice questions or coding exercises to go with each chapter, and contains no "for more information, see..." referrals. The streams chapter, for example, primarily covers file I/O and barely touches on network and socket streams. There are some questions I still don't know where to find answers to short of scouring through the PHP manual itself in hopes of stumbling across it.
In short, a good overview of the PHP language, but pathetic exam prep.
Light Outline July 21, 2008
ShineyGirl (Sacramento, CA)
While there were a few perspectives that some might not have noticed or thought about. For the most part, this was pretty light weight compared to the practice exams. If you have been working in the language and keeping up with the world, you should have at least seen most of this before. I would not rely on it for more than a detailed outline of some of what you need to know cold - - - at least for the practice exams. Perhaps I will be surprised by the actual exam, and find that this is exactly what is needed - - - who knows.
A Waste February 23, 2008
orangekay (San Francisco, CA United States)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
One can easily argue that the certification exam itself is a waste of money, but with this book and its associated practice exams, the case is a little more cut-and-dry.
Want to pass the exam? Know the following things:
1. What can and can't go in a function/variable name.
2. What typehints are, how they work, and where they're applied.
3. What all of the array_*() functions do. The more verbose array_*_*() functions which nobody uses can be safely skipped over.
4. How to use the SimpleXML library in a very general way i.e. access elements, attributes and convert to DOM.
5. Everything about the new object model, including abstract and final classes, the new constructor format, destructors, autoloaders and access specifiers (public, private, protected).
6. How and when to pass by reference.
7. When things go out of scope.
8. What the following php.ini directives do: allow_url_fopen, register_globals, enable_dl, disable_functions.
9. What goes in the superglobals and when ($_SERVER, $_GET, $_POST, $_REQUEST, $_ARGV).
10. What all of the bitwise operators do (you should also be able to convert numbers to and from decimal, octal, hexadecimal and binary notation with nothing but your brain and a piece of scratch paper).
Database topics are covered, but you generally don't have to know any of the nonsense about mysqli or PDO--these things are all too buggy to actually use anyway, so learning about them is doubly pointless. If you can memorize function argument lists, do so with the preg_ and various string functions, because they like to throw some curveballs that use the optional args no one ever thinks about. If you can't, then don't bother because you can usually eliminate at least two of the choices they give you right off the bat and guess your way through the rest.
And please, please, please, leave comments on the questions that have misspelled words. They really need to fix that if they're going to charge $125 for a test.
 I passed! October 29, 2007
Pablo Viquez (San Jose, Costa Rica)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I took the test and passed :) (I think that says it all ;-) )
I studied the book along with the PHP help in order to digg a little more on the functions. I also bought the online practice test to see which areas I needed to focus on.
I liked the book, easy to understand/read.
 Good book for the PHP certification. October 4, 2007
H. Wang
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This books covers a good amount of the topics on the certification, and I would definitely recommend it for the certification and general PHP knowledge. You will probably need more than this to pass the certification. I would recommend taking the online practice tests from the Zend certification site as well.
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