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MySQL is one of the most popular open source databases. With an estimated 10 million active installations and more then 50,000 downloads every day, it runs on nearly every Unix platform and Windows as well. Along with this popularity, however, comes a host of questions from users on how to best accomplish any of a myriad of tasks. That's where MySQL Cookbook comes in. Whether you're new to MySQL or a long-time user, you will find numerous "tricks" that you can put to immediate use.
True to the style of O'Reilly's cookbook series, MySQL Cookbook provides practical how to's or "recipes" for more than 250 things you might want to do with a database -- everything from setting up a user account to processing web input. It also covers stored routines, triggers, events and views, new with MySQL 5.0. It's one of those books you can grab off the shelf to find an answer to a specific problem or read cover to cover to fine tune your MySQL skills.
Written for MySQL 5.0/5.1 but still doing a great job of covering the still popular MySQL 4.1, this book brings the recipes of the first version up to date and adds many more. It also covers using MySQL with Perl, PHP, Python, Java and Ruby!
In fact, the variety of languages used in MySQL Cookbook is its strength as well as its weakness. While you're sure to find numerous recipes for working in whatever language you prefer, you will also find that many recipes you want to pursue will be provided in some other language. Even so, this is the most useful book for solving problems in MySQL that I have seen so far. It provides answers for questions you are likely to ask yourself and the answers are both clear and expertly developed.
Nearly 950 pages and more than 2" thick, MySQL Cookbook is a book that every serious MySQL programmer should have on his/her shelf. Even if you're proficient at MySQL, you are likely to find numerous tips in this book that make you say "Wow, I didn't know I could do that!" For example, did you know that adding -X to the command line gives you your MySQL output in XML? With plenty of code snippets that you can grab and use, this book will pay for itself in no time. And even at $49.99, the cost per pound is very reasonable.
