This book provides many perspectives on PHP5 certification. However, as a certification preparing guide, I don't think it is good one to pass the exam just by reading this book.

First, it does not have questions at the end of each chapter to evaluate how well the reader learned from the material, as many other exam preparing guides do. It is hard for me to imagine how does the real exam go without those questions.

Second, it has many errors in this book. Some of them could mis-lead you to get wrong concepts of PHP. I agree with Brian, the previous reviewer, beware of using this book. Once you felt anything confused, check out other books or write some codes to test what is the right concept you should learn.

Finally, it does not mention any information about how to connect / retrieve / update information from / to databases with a PHP script. It does have a chapter called "Database Programming", but all it has are only the introduction of SQL statements. I doubt if we don't need to prepare that part for PHP certification.

However, it provides some chapters for XML, web services, and security, which are valuable to refer to. It brought my attention to find more resources to read for those parts.

If you prefer a book that mentions key points of exam without many details, this book is the one you should read; otherwise, pick another one will be a better idea for you.

If you have already been using PHP5 on a regular basis, this book is a good source of review material but doesn't necessarily cover very much new material. It is, I suppose, a good foundation to study for the test, but it *most definitely* is not the only book that you're going to want to read before taking the Zend Certification test.

I also noticed a lot of errors in this book, so beware of that. I recommend the book by Mike Zandstra PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice in addition to this one, especially if you are moving from PHP4 to PHP5.

This is a very good study guide for the Zend PHP5 exam. Touches on quiet a few of the more subtle subjects in PHP5 and has a very nice learning curve. It's not recommended for the beginners and has to be read alongside other materials (be it online or offline) for maximum efficiency. It's not the definitive PHP study guide and you shouldn't rely on it alone for the exam. Great value for money!