Review About Mysql Database

Review by Jack D. Herrington:

I was hoping that there would be more about designing databases. Though I was pleasantly surprised at the solid introduction to MySQL that the book gives. In fact it spends the first two thirds of the book on the basics, before getting into optimization and finally programming.

The design aspect of the book is in the third chapter, which is one of the books best. There is some good high level material on the fundamentals of schema design, and then material on relation mapping, and then into it’s implementation in MySQL.

There is a lot to like in this book. And I like the fact that someone is finally giving some attention to MySQL, which, if it’s not the most advanced database in the world, is probably the most ubiquitous. This is a fine book for anyone who works with MySQL.

Review by Harold McFarland:

The first three chapters of this book deal with the basics of MySQL including basic concepts, column and table types, keys, indexes, and normalization. The authors have written an excellent introduction to MySQL that provides all the core information you need to start using it right away. The chapter on finding the bottlenecks is one of the best sections in the book and details some of the finer points to be considered when creating your database. On the other hand, the part on optimizing queries is excellent for the beginning MySQL student (which is the target audience for this book) but not as good as it could be for the more experienced MySQL user. Perhaps I am just more sensitive to this area because of all the badly done queries I have had to deal with before. A good understanding of just this part can make a tremendous difference in optimization. If you are new to SQL queries the authors have done a great job of explaining why this is important and how to understand it when a query takes under a minute to run and then after a small change takes twenty. The last section covers accessing the MySQL database via other programming languages such as PHP. Beginning MySQL Database Design and Optimization is a recommended read for its target audience – the beginning MySQL programmer.

Review by macktheknife:

I have just started learning some PHP & MySQL development using “PHP & MySQL Web Development” published by Sams and “Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL” from O’Reilly. Prospective readers might be wondering the difference between the two in deciding which one to buy, so I hope to shed some light on the issue.Sams: The Welling and Thomson book is more “hands-on” in that it takes the reader step-by-step in developing an e-commerce website. The chapters are organized in a goal-oriented manner: PHP, MySQL, the basics of e-commerce, security, and design of the site.O’Reilly: The Williams and Lane book is structured in a similar way by showing readers PHP and then MySQL. Examples to reinforce concepts are also provided. While the O’Reilly book also tries to take the reader in developing an e-commerce site, it is a bit more theoretical. Also, there are some differences in focus: the O’Reilly book has a section on using JavaScript while the Sams book has a final chapter on creating PDF files using PHP.If I had to choose just one book, I would go with the Sams book due to its more gentle learning curve. However, I believe that the O’Reilly book is no slouch, and I will probably come to appreciate it more once I gain more experience in PHP and MySQL development.One last word about my programming background: I knew a bit of Perl, Java, HTML, and JavaScript before tackling PHP and MySQL. I consider myself to be an “advanced beginner” (an oxymoron, of course). To get the most out of these two books, you should know HTML well enough to read it (you should at least recognize some tags) and it would definitely be helpful if you have some programming experience. You could very well make PHP your first programming language, but I would advise against it. Start with something like Perl (whose syntax is very similar to PHP’s).I highly recommend both books to prospective PHP and MySQL developers who are willing to spend some time and effort.

Review by D. Emmett Pickerel:

I’ve been entrenched with JSP heavily for the last couple of years, so I haven’t familiarised myself with PHP yet. I needed a book that would show me a larger picture than I got in a web developer’s job, and showed me how to put it together with more modern techniques.
This book is a perfect example of why I choose O’Reilly whenever in doubt. Chapter 1 is an overview of how web applications are put together. Chapter 2 goes through all the basic PHP syntax (stuff that would take other books several fluffy dry chapters to process). Chapter 3 gets you through all the mySQL and sql basics so you feel comfortable with that, too.
There’s no 4 page tutotial entitled: “Using a text editor: Wordpad” There’s also no kitch “Employee Database” example cop-out. Instead, Hugh and Dave give a realistic and usable storefront application. This book alone is probably enough for the independent web developer to get a functional site up for her/himself or a client.

Review by farout:

Here is my background:

Java, Cold Fusion, ASP.net, C#, Rails; sys admin for Windows and Unix boxes.

Picked up several books to learn PHP – yuck!

Picked up this book. Wow. In 2 days I was on my way!

1. all the code examples actually work. Yes, it’s true. I know it’s shocking.

2. the explanations are excellent. Wow can this person communicate. Again shocking.

3. Tons of examples. Talking is great but I learn through code examples. There are plenty here. That is why in 2 days you will be like: Wow I can code in PHP.

4. Here is the best part – Nixon helps you setup everything so it works. I mean in less than 30min I was running PHP via Apache on my Windows using Mysql. I have days with other books trying to make things work because the author did not care enough to actually help me do setup.

Then pick up the PHP Web Dev Wellin/Thompson book and bang with Nixon’s – you are a PHP intermediate level programmer.

Really – that easy.

I wasted so many hours with other books – crap. Live and learn.

Thank you Robin Nixon. This book is a godsend. With the hours I saved, I am partying – yee ha!

Review by Running Bill:

I agree with what’s already been said about the code working and the author communicating well. Too often I’ve been disappointed with an over-abundance of typos or just bad instruction, both really frustrating when already faced with the challenge of learning something new. But this book definitely delivers there.

The reason I was really excited about this title and why I’m loving it so much as I go through it is that it focuses on combining all three and talks about real-world situations. You might read a PHP or javascript book that does the job teaching you those on their own but when it’s time to close the book and use them on a real website, you’d be lost or Googling a LOT of things. Most “cool” sites do a good job of making their scripting languages work well together, and this book will show you how to do that, and it serves as a great jump-off for more advanced scripting later. It’s like the author said “I know what you’re trying to accomplish, here’s how to do it.”

Awesome job and I hope to see more like this!

Review by Robert P. Beveridge:

Kevin Yank, Build Your Own Database-Driven Web Site with PHP and MySQL (Sitepoint, 2009)

I have just finished my first read through Kevin Yank’s Build Your Own Database-Driven Web Site with PHP and MySQL. I can tell you that it will not be my last read through it, by any means. While there are a few places it glosses over and a few rather shocking omissions in the name of simplicity, it was (and I can rarely say this with a computer book) exactly what I was looking for.

Using simple, easy-to-understand tutorials, Yank takes you through the development of a very simple website that has a database as its back end. This should not surprise you, given the title of the book. Impressively, it neither manages to talk down to its reader (assuming a complete newb) nor spirals off into overly technical jargon (assuming a MySQL-certified reader). Granted, if you’ve been a database developer for ten years (that would be me) some of this will be redundant, but it’s a good refresher course for basic database concepts and a perfect way to immerse yourself in MySQL if you’re coming from a different DBMS. That said, my main problem with the book was Yank’s breezy passing by the idea of using the InnoDB engine and letting your code handle foreign key constraints. That’s workable (though very, very iffy) for the four-table database Yank builds here, but any real-life (read: complex) solution will quickly get unmanageable; any minor change to the table structure, depending on how many tables it relates to, could require hours of hunting and changing code. As any programmer learns within the first ten minutes of starting his first programming course, that is a recipe for bugs.

My other problem with it, though this is far more minor, is that (I think) content management systems like this usually store site settings in the database as well, and Yank doesn’t address this at all beyond logins and passwords, choosing to refer the user to learning CSS. I thought CSS was dead, or close to it. I’d have expected that in a book written in 2004, but in 2009? But my inexperience with web apps–I’ve always been a back-end developer–may be more at fault than Yank’s writing, so I’ll defer judgment on that to those who actually know what they’re doing with this stuff, who will hopefully get round to reviewing the book eventually. In any case, the stuff that’s actually here, the parts on data access and getting your data from database to website, are clear as well as being very easy to understand and implement, and that’s a rare thing in computer books. Highly recommended, though you’ll need other books to cover the places where this is lacking. ****

Review by Mauricio Quiroga I. Websites:

This is a good book in an overall point of view. If you want to learn from the ground up without any help from any web editor this is your choice. It is a little difficult for a beginner but the examples in the book are pretty clear and straightforward.

What is most interesting about this book is the use of php templates and the coding style that the book wants the reader to learn. The book shows a wide use of php templates.

Review by Ales Kavsek:

As an Oracle DBA, I was looking for a book that can help me better understand MySQL core concepts and differences compared to my primary working platform. I was looking for a book with the flavor of Oracle Concepts Manual. I partially read official MySQL reference manual but didn’t find (get?) all the answers (nor I really enjoyed reading it – sorry AB doc. team!).
I think this book filled my knowledge gap on MySQL perfectly. Actually, this book could easily bear different title, such as “MySQL concepts guide” or something like that. You’ll probably read the book in a couple of days, thanks to the author’s clear writing style.
Let me give you an example. Some technical topics are difficult to explain in a few sentences, like the one on letter I (Isolation) from ACID rules for ‘safe’ transactions. Just compare the explanation on “phantom reads” from this book with the one you’ll find in Oracle Concepts Manual (freely available on-line from OTN). Now, which one did you understand on the first pass?
Thanks to clear and short explanations, right from the beginning of the book, I learned some important technical facts about MySQL that I could easily put in perspective with my Oracle background. For example:
-”All InnoDB tables have primary keys”
-”InnoDB tables are similar to Oracle index-organized tables.”
-”MySQL will only ever use one index per table per query!”
-”MySQL doesn’t cache rows for MyISAM tables, only indexes…as opposed to InnoDB”
-”…counts are very fast on MyISAM tables and slow on InnoDB tables…”
Obviously the chapters that I liked the most in this book are the ones that covers core things very well:
“2. Storage Engines”,
“4. Indexes”,
“5. Query Performance” and
“10. Security”.
All other chapters are fine but not essential for my current use of MySQL (like the excellent chapter on replication where it’s obvious that Jeremy poses vast practical experience with replication from his workplace at Yahoo!).
The only complaint that I have is the one on “Storage Engines” chapter. In my opinion multi storage engine architecture is the most important advantage of MySQL over all other database vendors
products. I wish author’s went a little deeper with the details (and thanks but no thanks, I don’t want to read source code , especially InnoDB engine is not covered enough (hmm…or maybe it’s just me, after all .
Overall this book is highly recommended to all DBAs, the existing MySQL DBAs as well as to all others that work with other RDBMS and want a fast way to pick the most important technical nuances of MySQL.

Review by Harold McFarland:

While the authors go over the basics of MySQL briefly in the first couple of chapters this is not a book for the new MySQL administrator. It assumes a good deal of basic knowledge about MySQL. On the other hand, if you know the basics and need to get that extra knowledge to move your system from one that just works to one that truly performs then this book is for you. From the initial steps of benchmarking your system and tweaking the indexes the book moves on to improving your performance through optimizing queries and server performance tuning. This includes examining all aspects of your system from disk and file system selection to minor configuration changes that may make great changes in performance. Once the server is working at its optimum for your needs the book turns to how to scale your SQL system up to multiple servers and configure replication, load balancing, and high availability systems. The main text of the book ends with a section on backup, recovery, and security. If you need performance, reliability and security beyond the standard configuration and need to maximize throughput this is the book you will want to have at hand. “High Performance MySQL” is one of the best optimization and performance books available for the intermediate to advanced user of MySQL – very highly recommended.

Review by Pearly:

I’m a DBA for a mid-sized manufacturing company. We were about to upgrade our SQL Server to Oracle 10g, which was going to set ups back a lot of money. I had been experimenting with MySQL and bought this helpful book to give me a better understanding of how to make it run fast. I really liked the case studies, because they cover a lot of different senarios. To make long story short, I was able to convert the SQL Server database to MySQL, and things have been going great.