Chapter 10: Building a Three-Tiered Data Application

Overview

You began this book looking at HTML pages, which are essentially static documents. You then learned how to generate dynamic pages with the powerful PHP language. In the last few chapters, you learned how to use a database management system such as MySQL to build powerful data structures. This last chapter will tie together the PHP programming and data programming aspects to build a full-blown data management system for the spy database. The system you will learn can easily be expanded to any kind of data project you can think of, including e-commerce applications. Specifically, you will learn how to:

• Design a moderate-to-large data application.

• Build a library of reusable data functions.

• Optimize functions for use across data sets.

• Include library files in your programs.