From a /. review of Beginning PHP5 and MySQL

W. Jason Gilmore and Apress have put together an impressive volume, both in girth and content, in Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL…(skip boring book review filler)…the next ten chapters delve deeper into PHP’s file and operating system functions, web form integration, http authentication, file upload management, LDAP, session management (one of the best aspects of PHP and incredibly easy to use), Web Services (SOAP, SimpleXML extensions as well as NuSOAP and MagpieRSS — cool stuff!)

I’ll say cool stuff.

update: 7 well written pages on Magpie. Can’t comment on the rest of the book (not the target audience), but the 7 pages I read were solid.