Excerpts from the Preface:

PHP 5 is expected to maintain and even increase PHP’s leadership in the web development market. Not only does it revolutionizes PHP’s object oriented support but it also contains many new features which make it the ultimate web development platform. The rewritten XML functionality in PHP 5 puts it on par with other web technologies in some areas and overtakes them in others, especially due to the new SimpleXML extension which makes it ridiculously easy to manipulate XML documents. In addition, the new SOAP, MySQLi, and variety of other extensions are significant milestones in PHP’s support for additional technologies.

Intended Audience:

This book is an introduction to the advanced features new to PHP 5. It is written for PHP programmers who are making the move to PHP 5. Although Chapter 2, "PHP 5 Basic Language," contains an introduction to PHP 5 syntax, it is meant as a refresher for PHP programmers and not as a tutorial for new programmers. However, web developers with experience programming other high-level languages may indeed find that this tutorial is all they need in order to begin working effectively with PHP 5.