I'm an author! "Apache Derby: Off to the Races"

If you're looking for a book that covers Apache Derby / IBM Cloudscape top-to-bottom, and you want a gentle introduction to programming database applications with PHP, Perl, Python, JDBC, or .NET, Apache Derby: Off to the Races is the book for you! No, really... I'm a co-author, responsible for the chapters on managing Apache Derby (hey, it's a zero-admin database, so that wasn't too hard), setting up Apache Derby as a Network Server for ODBC / Call Level Interface (CLI) applications, and writing Perl, PHP, and Python database applications with Derby with both Web interfaces and GUI interfaces. Wez Furlong, the king of PECL and PDO himself, reviewed the PHP chapter, so you know that, at least, is going to be good My co-authors are Paul Zikopoulos and George Baklarz, who have written a ton of other commercial books. Me, this is my first time out in the real world (I've written technical manuals for IBM before), and I'm pretty excited. I just sent the last, corrected copy of my chapters back to the publisher yesterday, and while I'm sure there are parts that I could improve on (if I thought about it for a really really long time), I'm pretty damn proud of what's going in there and I think it will stand the reader in good stead. Of course, it's not going to be published until the fall, but why wait -- order your copy now at Apache Derby: Off to the Races!