Comments about oreilly Learning MySQL:

A very clear book if you are either brand new to SQL or to MySQL. A reader who completes most of this book should be in good shape to start using MySql especially with PHP.

Comments about oreilly Learning MySQL:

If you're an advanced MySQL user why would you buy a beginners book, less alone purchase a book if you're looking to learn or code specific language to interact with it?

Comments about oreilly Learning MySQL:

This book is very good for beginners wanting to learn MySQL. As noted earlier by other readers this book is not for advanced MySQL users nor web developers looking to learn specific language for interaction with MySQL; therefore, it is unfair to give this book an average review because of lack of research.

Comments about oreilly Learning MySQL:

That's a good book, not for advanced SQL programmers though.

Easy to understand with great examples. I would recommend this book if you are starting to learn MySQL or are a intermediate programmer and needs a good database like MySQL. This book can be a reference for your studies. If I had this book before I could spent less time learning MySQL. But I probably would not recommend for heavy advanced SQL users, since the book have an overall idea of the SQL commands and some linux/php/database coding. Digg in!

Comments about oreilly Learning MySQL:

If you are a web developer looking to get started working with MySQL as your back-end database, you're probably better off getting a book which is focused on your language of choice.

If you are an experienced database developer or DBA, you're probably better off Google-ing around or just lurking on the MySQL DEV website (http://dev.mysql.com/). This book won't teach you anything you don't know (or can't find elsewhere).

If you are a novice web/DB developer, and you purchase this book, proceed with caution. I found the book to be incomplete; there is no mentioning of stored procedures, minimal discussion around transactions (what about SAVEPOINTs?), and when in Chapter 8 "Doing More with MySQL" the authors mention the use of functions "to meet more complex information needs" they mention only the RAND() function?! What about IFNULL()/NULLIF() , CASE, just to name a few.

I also found a few "accidents waiting to happen": when teaching about creating indexes, why would one want to DROP the table you're working with and recreate it with a "KEY" (pages 204-5) and only introduce the ALTER TABLE/ADD INDEX on page 217. Read (to the end) before you execute!

If you bought this book, you should probably buy MySQL Stored Procedure Programming By Guy Harrison, Steven Feuerstein (O'Reilly) to get a better picture of MySQL.

Comments about oreilly Learning MySQL:

The text of the book is clear and informative, however I keep getting bamboozled by the index. I look for things in the index that I know are in the book, and I can't find them. This means that the book is a decent tutorial, but falls down as a reference book.

Comments about oreilly Learning MySQL:

This is a good book, maybe as a reference. The first 3 or 4 chapters are vital reading. A bit dry though, who only works on a database without any other software? This isn't 1980.

None the less, if you're learning PHP, Rails or what have you, this needs to be on your bookshelf.

It does answer some questions about MySQL that never get answered elsewhere.