The Apache Modules Book is the latest open-source software development book from Prentice Hall. The book forms part of the Open Source Development Series from Prentice Hall, which includes other titles such as Understanding AJAX and Embedded Linux. Dan Wellman looks at this book chapter by chapter to see whether it's a worthy addition to an open source developer's library.
Prentice Hall are renowned as a leading publisher of developer focused and educational books, and are America's leading publisher of academic textbooks. It was written by Nick Kew, and features a foreword from Rich Bowen, both prominent figures in the world of Apache. Nick has decades of professional software and system experience and is a member of both the Apache core development team, and the Apache Software Foundation. The book is priced at a very reasonable $49.99 and the ISBN is 0-12-240967-4.
The book is separated into just 12 chapters. Often technical code-based books can run up to as many as 50 chapters, and many are so big that they are broken down into parts before being broken down further into chapters. Each of these chapters focus on a specific aspect of either the Apache server itself, or the process of creating new modules.
The first chapter is purely concept-based and gives an introduction to the Apache Server and its origins and history. It gives a detailed description of the Apache Software Foundation, including who they are, what they represent, the different levels of developer participation, the development process and information regarding the Apache License (the full license is also included at the end of the book in Appendix A and the Contributor License Agreement as Appendix B).
