Best practices and expert techniques for today's most demanding apps As the world's most popular, general purpose, open source scripting language, PHP is frequently used with MySQL to create high-traffic, mission-critical applications. This indispensable book shares proven, author-tested best practices and expert techniques that can be applied to even the most demanding MySQL-driven PHP apps. You'll explore ways to extend MySQL with user-defined functions, write PHP extensions, and solve problems when PHP and MySQL alone are not enough and other techniques or third-party tools are necessary. Expert PHP and MySQL: Reviews essential techniques, such as design patterns, complex queries, and advanced regular expression.