Chapter 3. MySQL

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In this chapter

A Brief History
What Is MySQL?
Installation
Configuration for Use with IMP
Database System Concepts
The IMP Database Structure
SQL Overview
MySQL 's License
Onward!

In this chapter, I will give you a good overview of MySQL and a brief overview of database design.

I will walk you through installing MySQL on your system. You will be installing the freely available RPM package file, version 3.22. Because MySQL is always improving and changing, I strongly recommend you install the 3.22 version. After your project is up and working, you can experiment with different versions of MySQL. Later versions might introduce some features that will cause problems with your project.

NOTE

MySQL is officially pronounced "my ess queue ell." It is not pronounced "my sequel."

I will also introduce you to some database design concepts and give you some rules of thumb to use during database design and implementation. The concepts introduced will help you understand how IMP uses MySQL. (IMP uses MySQL to store user preference settings and an address book for each user .)

You will learn enough of MySQL to enable you to examine the tables and data that IMP uses on your machine. You will be given ideas to use in future enhancements of your system. As you work through these possible enhancements, you will be shown common problems in using MySQL and solutions to those problems.

only for RuBoard - do not distribute or recompile