MySQL Phrasebook

by Zak Greant and Chris Newman

The MySQL Phrasebook is a pocket guide that is jam-packed with useful and essential code "phrases" for the MySQL developer's everyday use. Packed with practical solutions for tasks that the MySQL... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0672328399
• ISBN13: 9780672328398
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: Sams Publishing
• Length: 181 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 4.5" x 7.1"

Customer Reviews

Book Review from Silicon Valley Web Builder (SVWB)

I will never estimate how practical and useful a pocket guide are. This pocket guide can replace a standard developer book on MySQL as far as covering the most essential details to create, design, develop and maintain MySQL database. Sometimes bigger book with more pages does not offer you more concise knowledge. This pocket guide gives you the reference links that would save you time and effort in filtering search results and identifying appropriate documentation. At last the Appendix on "A Brief MySQL Tutorial" is one of the best written tutorial in MySQL using a simple application with code samples and chronological tasks. MySQL Phrasebook

Nice Reference

This book is pretty nice. It's fairly handy. However, I'm inclined to group it in the beginner-intermediate range (not that it's advertised otherwise). The majority of the times that I've picked it up to investigate things that I wasn't sure about/had never attempted, I failed to find them in the index. Thumbing through the book to find various things I find a proliferation of information that any experienced user (note--I've only been using MySQL for a year now) will almost certainly not need to look up. Don't get me wrong, it is a very useful book; it's just that most of the times I reach for it, I find myself disappointed and getting another book or looking online.

Great reference tool

It's a very light book, slightly taller than your average paper back, weighing in at only 181 pages. In those pages the authors have managed to cram in lots of different types of information: From a basic introduction to the relational database model, to basic administration information, to query design and code examples in C, PHP & Perl. That's a lot of information for such a tiny book, so necessarily the coverage is brief. Fortunately the authors managed to hone in on the information from each section that would be most useful to the reader, and concentrate on that. The "phrases" the book introduces deal are basically short little answers to questions that come up frequently when working with MySQL (I might say that a Phrasebook Sam's pocketbook version of O'Reilly's cookbooks). Starting off with basic things like select queries, and moving up to cross table queries (incidentally I finally understand the difference between an inner and outer join). It also goes into performance tips, server administration, and backups. If you're already well versed in the world of MySQL, this isn't the book for you. However, if you're anything like me, someone who uses MySQL a lot for a few basic things but doesn't really know much beyond that, this book will be a good addition to your reference library. If you're just getting started with MySQL this book isn't going to teach you everything you know, but will help answer some questions for you along the way. Overall I'd recommend this book to most of my friends.