Introduction

MySQL has grown up. Once dismissed as a lightweight toy for websites, MySQL 4 is now a viable mission-critical data-management solution. Whereas before it was the ideal choice for websites, now it contains many of the features needed in other environments, all while maintaining its impressive speed. It has long been able to outperform many commercial solutions for raw speed and has an elegant and powerful permissions system, but now version 4 has the ACID-compliant InnoDB transactional storage engine.

MySQL 4 is faster, has online backup facilities, and has a multitude of new features. There is little reason not to consider MySQL for your database solution. MySQL AB, the company behind MySQL, offers efficient and low-cost support, and, like most open-source communities, you'll find lots of free support on the Web. Standard features not yet included in MySQL (such as views and stored procedures) are currently under development and may even be ready by the time you read this book.

There are many important reasons to choose MySQL as your mission-critical data-management solution:

Cost MySQL is free for most purposes, and its support is inexpensive.

Support MySQL AB offers inexpensive support contracts, and there's a large and active MySQL community.

Speed MySQL outperforms most of its rivals.

Functionality MySQL offers most of the features serious developers require, such as full ACID compliance, support for most of ANSI SQL, online backups, replication, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) support, and integration with almost all programming environments. Also, it is being developed and updated faster than many of its rivals, so almost all of the "standard" features MySQL does not yet have are under development.

Portability MySQL runs on the vast majority of operating systems, and in most cases data can be transferred from one system to another without difficulty.

Ease of use MySQL is easy to use and administer. Many older databases suffer from legacy issues, making administration needlessly complex. MySQL's tools are powerful and flexible without sacrificing usability.

Who Should Buy This Book?

This book is for developers, database administrators (DBAs), and MySQL users. It contains the following topics:

• Exploring Structured Query Language (SQL) as implemented by MySQL.

• Understanding and using the data and table types.

• Optimizing your queries and indexes.

• Backing up the database.

• Managing users and security.

• Administering and configuring MySQL (and optimizing the configuration for performance).

• Replicating MySQL onto multiple servers.

• Understanding database design and database normalization, and walking you through a complete case study. Knowledge of this topic is vital if you plan to use MySQL in serious applications.

• Programming with MySQL.

• Writing your own extensions to MySQL.

• Installing MySQL.

The book's appendixes contain the following:

• A thorough MySQL reference

• References containing PHP, Perl, C, Java, Python, and ODBC functions and methods for interacting with MySQL