Vikram Vaswani is the founder and CEO of Melonfire, a company specializing in software consultancy and content creation/syndication services. He is a passionate advocate of the open-source software movement and frequently contributes articles and tutorials on open-source technologies, including Perl, Python, PHP, MySQL, and Linux to the community at large through his weekly column. His previous books include MySQL: The Complete Reference and XML and PHP.

Vikram has over eight years of experience in the IT world, and has spent six of those years working with PHP and MySQL as user, administrator, and application developer. He is the author of Zend Technologies� PHP 101 series for PHP beginners, and has extensive experience deploying PHP and MySQL in a variety of different environments (including corporate intranets, high-traffic Internet web sites, and mission-critical thin client applications).

When he�s not plotting to rule the world from a heavily guarded conference room at Melonfire HQ, Vikram amuses himself by reading crime fiction, watching old movies, playing squash, fiddling with his ever-growing collection of electronic gadgets, and keeping an eye out for unfriendly agents.

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