Product Description
Along with MySQL's popularity has come a flood of questions about
solving specific problems, and that's where this Cookbook is essential.
Designed as a handy resource when you need quick solutions or
techniques, the book offers dozens of short, focused pieces of code and
hundreds of worked-out examples for programmers of all levels who don't
have the time (or expertise) to solve MySQL problems from scratch.
The new edition covers MySQL 5.0 and its powerful new features, as well
as the older but still widespread MySQL 4.1. One major emphasis of this
book is how to use SQL to formulate queries for particular kinds of
questions, using the mysql client program included in MySQL
distributions. The other major emphasis is how to write programs that
interact with the MySQL server through an API. You'll find plenty of
examples using several language APIs in multiple scenarios and
situations, including the use of Ruby to retrieve and format data.
There are also many new examples for using Perl, PHP, Python, and Java
as well.
Other recipes in the book teach you to:
- Access data from multiple tables at the same time
- Use SQL to select, sort, and summarize rows
- Find matches or mismatches between rows in two tables
- Determine intervals between dates or times, including age calculations
- Store images into MySQL and retrieve them for display in web pages
- Get LOAD DATA to read your data files properly or find which values in the file are invalid
- Use strict mode to prevent entry of bad data into your database
- Copy a table or a database to another server
- Generate sequence numbers to use as unique row identifiers
- Create database events that execute according to a schedule
- And a lot more
MySQL Cookbook
doesn't attempt to develop full-fledged, complex applications. Instead,
it's intended to assist you in developing applications yourself by
helping you get past problems that have you stumped.
Amazon.com
Good programming--which is to say, programming that yields both
efficient code and a profitable life for the programmer--depends on not
reinventing the wheel. If someone else has solved the problem you're
facing (and someone almost always has), you'd be foolish to waste your
energy figuring out your own solution. MySQL Cookbook
presents solutions to scores of problems related to the MySQL database
server. Readers stand a good chance of finding a ready-made solution to
problems such as querying databases, validating and formatting data,
importing and exporting values, and using advanced features like
session tracking and transactions. Paul DuBois has done a great job
assembling efficient solutions to common database programming problems,
and teaches his readers a lot about MySQL and its attendant APIs in the
process.
DuBois organizes his cookbook's recipes into sections on
the problem, the solution stated simply, and the solution implemented
in code and discussed. The implementation and discussion sections are
the most valuable, as they contain the command sequences, code
listings, and design explanations that can be transferred to outside
projects. The main gripe readers will have about MySQL Cookbook
is that the author, in his effort to cover the range of MySQL-friendly
programming languages, uses different languages in his solutions to
various problems. You'll see a Perl solution to one programming
challenge (Perl, in fact, is the most frequently used language,
followed by PHP), a Python fix for the next, and a Java sample after
that. Readers have to hope that they find a solution in the language
they're working with, or that they're able to transliterate the one
DuBois has provided. It's usually not a big problem. --David Wall
Topics covered:
How to make MySQL databases do your bidding--in terms of queries, table
manipulation, data formatting, transactions, and Web
interfaces--through the database server's command line interfaces and
(more importantly) through the MySQL APIs of Perl, PHP, Java, and
Python. Particularly excellent coverage deals with formatting dates and
times, management of null values, string manipulation, and
import/export techniques.
About the Author
Paul DuBois was one of the first contributors to the online MySQL
Reference Manual, a renowned documentation project that supported MySQL
administrators and database developers in the first few years of
MySQL's existence in the late 1990's. Paul went on to write more than
six books on MySQL, including the first edition of "MySQL Cookbook". He
is also the author of "Using csh & tcsh" and "Software Portability
with imake", both by O'Reilly.