How This Book Is Organized

This book is broken up into fourteen chapters and three appendixes, as follows:

Chapter 1, explains the major components of MySQL and useful guidelines for getting information and dealing with the MySQL community.

Chapter 2, describes how to get MySQL running on all the systems supported by MySQL AB. It is necessary to read this chapter only if your system does not already have MySQL installed.

Chapter 3, introduces SQL and use of the mysql command-line utility. It is no replacement for learning SQL and relational database design, but can be useful to orient you.

Chapter 4, is the major chapter in this book, a comprehensive listing of all SQL statements supported by MySQL and their subclauses.

Chapter 5, covers SQL functions for manipulating text data.

Chapter 6, covers SQL functions that manipulate the various data and time formats supported by MySQL.

Chapter 7, covers mathematical SQL functions and functions used for combining information in columns, such as MAX( ) and COUNT( ).

Chapter 8, covers SQL functions, such as CASE and IF.

Chapter 9, covers SQL functions that can be used to control or get information about the database engine, and do other miscellaneous tasks.

Chapter 10, covers the options for the mysqld daemon, the mysql command-line client, and related commands.

Chapter 11, covers other commands for administering MySQL and its data.

Chapter 12 presents the Perl DBI module, used to access MySQL databases from Perl.

Chapter 13, presents the PHP functions used to query and manipulate MySQL databases.

Chapter 14, covers the data types and functions provided by MySQL's basic C library.

Appendix A, lists all the data types supported by MySQL.

Appendix B, lists all MySQL operators, such as arithmetic signs and the LIKE and IS NULL comparison operators.

Appendix C, lists the operating system's environment variables consulted by the MySQL server, client, and other utilities.