Managing and Using MySQL (2nd Edition)
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Spotlight Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 3.08Customer Rating: 2
Summary: Lack of In-Depth Information
Comment: I generally love the O'Reilly books because they tend to be very thorough and have lots of practical code examples, but this book was a big disappointment to me. I was easily frustrated by this book. As a beginner to MySQL and database programming, I was completely lost whenever I tried to apply something to my own projects. The explanations given here are very brief and the authors often send you elsewhere for more in-depth discussion. I wound up doing most of my research online and just using the SQL reference chapter to look-up query syntax. I give it two stars because it did help me get started, but I'd say this is a poor reference for anyone looking for in-depth coverage.
Customer Rating: 4
Summary: Getts you going
Comment: Great book to get you up and running with MySQL.
Thanks O'Reilly...
Customer Rating: 4
Summary: Good Introduction to MySQL - But Only an Introduction
Comment: This book is clearly and succinctly written, and provides an excellent introduction to MySQL. It starts with a few pages on the history and philosophy behind MySQL, which is useful if you want to understand the advantages and disadvantages of MySQL relative to other options such as PostgreSQL or Oracle. It then follows with chapters on installation, with specific instructions for Solaris, Linux, and Windows; on MySQL's dialect of SQL (Structured Query Language); and on basic administration tasks such as configuration, startup and shutdown, logging, backup, and recovery. That's really all you need to get a basic database up and running, and it's all in the first 80 pages of the book.
Part II of the book covers more advanced administrative tasks, with chapters on performance tuning, security, and database design. This section of the book is weaker than the first section; while there's some useful introductory material on each of these topics, depth is lacking. For example, the discussion of putting a database into second normal form is misleading because it uses a table with only one field as the unique identifier, making it impossible to clearly illustrate the removal to a smaller table of fields that are dependent on only part of a (typically multifield) unique identifier. Also, some of the more advanced MySQL features which might be appropriate for this section are omitted.
Part III of the book, entitled "MySQL Programming", has sections accessing MySQL from Perl, Python, PHP, C, Java. These sections are mostly limited to information specific to MySQL that might not be found in general purpose documentation of these languages. For example, the PHP section documents the relevant function calls, since PHP uses different functions to access MySQL than it does to access, say, ODBC databases, while the Java section focuses on JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) driver configuration since the JDBC API is database independent.
Finally, there is a reference section and a good, complete index.
If what you want to do is get a small database up and running in a minimum of time with a minimum of hassle, this is the book for you. If you want more than an introductory level of detail and depth, though, you might look at other books; Leon Atkinson's "Core MySQL", for example, has more complete coverage, though the writing style is not as clear and direct.