This book assumes a basic familiarity with the technical components of the Web. Throughout the book, there are descriptions of the events that occur in a typical HTTP operation. There are also references in the text and the appendixes to other books and web sites for those who need more background or want to explore a subject in more depth.
The server examples are drawn from the Unix world because a majority of web servers use the Unix operating system, and because Unix has proven suited to running a scalable high-performance web site. To be completely honest, it’s also because my experience has been mostly with Solaris and Linux, and I like them. If you use a non-Unix web server, you’ll find that most of the advice in this book is still applicable to your server, but the specific details will vary.
It is assumed that the reader has some programming experience with C, Java™, or Perl, but that is not a requirement for using this book.
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