Book Club

Doug Gourley and Brian Totty have broken the topic into several sections that walk you through how the protocol is used in the real world. They begin with the foundations of HTTP, including information on the history, syntax and semantics of the protocol. They move on the next level covering server architecture, web caching hierarchies, proxies, and application issues like tunneling. A complete section is devoted to the security and authorizations aspects of HTTP. Content issues such as internationalization and content encoding are handled in part 4, while content publishing issues are handled in the final chapters of the book.

This is a hefty book (at 615 pages) that covers a broad gamut of information and not all audiences will find the whole book useful, but it contains sections that will apply to you whether you are a server developer or a content publisher.

Review by: Jeremy Beker
February 22, 2004