What do eBay, Amazon.com and CNN.com have in common? They're all applications that integrate large databases with the Web. The popularity of these applications stems from their accessibility and usability: thousands of users can access the same data at the same time without the need to install any additional software on their computers. This book offers Web developers a mixture of theoretical and practical information on creating Web database applications. Using PHP, and MySQL, two open-source technologies that are often combined to develop Web applications, the book offers detailed information on designing relational databases and on Web application architecture, both of which will be useful to readers who have never dealt with these issues before. The book also introduces Hugh and Dave's Online Wines, a complete (but fictional) online retail site that allows users to browse, search a dAtabase, add items to a shopping cart, manage their membership, and purchase wines. Using this site as an example, the book shows you how to implement searching and browsing. If you want to build small to medium-scale Web database applications that can run on modest hardware and process more than a million hits a day from users, this book will show you how.