The Introduction is always the last thing you write, and I’ve sometimes thought it should be the first thing you write. This time I drafted the introduction before writing and it helped me make sure I stayed a planned course. The production staff also helps clear up what I write, and you can check my acknowledgment page recognizing them and their talents, which are critical to bring a quality book into print.

This introduction covers the following:

   The “Book Outline” section summarizes each chapter in a sentence or two and should be worth a quick look.

   The “Lexicon” section gives you the rationale for variable naming conventions in the book, and my recommendations for saving you time debugging your code.

   The “Data Model” section describes the basis for the examples and tells you where to find the code that creates and seeds the student database.