Blurbs from the Hardcopy Edition

of Database Backed Web Sites by Philip Greenspun

Blurbs from People on Whose Server I have Root Password

Philip Greenspun interfaced our 60 GB Oracle medical record database to the Web in 1994. It took him three weeks and all it cost me was a 4 GB hard disk and some SIMMs for his Macintosh. Since then, Greenspun has become too rich and famous to write Perl anymore. I'm going to use this book to train some high school kids to replace him.
Isaac S. Kohane, M.D., Ph.D., Director, Children's Hospital Informatics Program
"Caught up in the frenzy of just being there, we have all been enticed by the possibilities the Net offers in a one-to-one world of idea and transactional commerce. Many have planted expensive seeds on the Net with the hope that they will germinate into something of value. Greenspun has thoroughly captured the logic of what can win from the viewpoint of both the creator, who may be, and the viewer, who is, king. Information and ideas can serve lofty purposes but without organization, tools to easily mine and find, and an audience to share and view, there is no purpose."
Mark Miller, Executive Vice President & General Manager, Hearst Magazines.

Blurbs from People Whose Products I Plug

"This is the first book on RDBMS-backed Web sites that an intelligent programmer can enjoy"
Doug McKee, Manager, Web Server Development, America OnLine

[Note: I do not use or plug AOL as most people know it; I use and plug AOLserver, a fabulous product that AOL bought. Doug came with AOLserver.]

Blurbs from People Who Work In My Building at MIT

"There are a lot of books that will tell you how to design a web site that looks like something else --- a computer game, or a print magazine --- which would be great if web pages were computer games or print magazines. They aren't. Read this book to find out what they are."
Robert S. Thau, author of the Apache Web server
"Greenspun's prize-winning and colorful Web publishing experience is as old as the Web and a must for all aspiring Web publishers."
Michael L. Dertouzos, Director MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, Author of What Will Be

Blurbs from Serious Bigshots Who Are Friends with My Friends

"IBM has been working for 20 years to build high performance relational database management systems. This book gives you field-tested ideas and techniques to unlock the data and deliver it to users across the Internet."
John R. Patrick, Vice President - Internet Technology, IBM Corporation
"Smart companies are using the Web to support collaboration. Smarter companies will be using the Web to support computer-to-computer transactions. Philip Greenspun has written the first book that explains how to do both elegantly."
Mort Meyerson, Chairman of Perot Systems Corporation
philg@mit.edu