MySQL

The absolutely very first resource you should consider is the MySQL manual, available through the company's Web site (www.mysql.com) in many different forms. The main online version has the added advantage of being searchable, while another online version includes user-submitted comments that are occasionally helpful. I also keep a copy of the manual on my hard drive for whichever version of MySQL I am running (since the manual reflects the current version of MySQL, it's smart to retain older copies).

Once you've performed an exhaustive search through the MySQL manual, you can consider turning to one of several MySQL-dedicated mailing lists (there are no official MySQL newsgroups). Each list focuses on a different area related to MySQL:

• Announcements

• General

• Java

• Windows

• ODBC

• C++

• Perl

All of these but the announcements are available in a digest form so that you can receive two large emails per day rather than dozens of individual ones. Plus these lists are available in other languages. For more information, see http://lists.mysql.com (Figure C.9).

Figure C.9. MySQL, like PHP, has many different mailing lists, each catering to a particular subtopic.

From the lists page, you can perform searches through the mailing list archives. Doing a quick search there before posting a question to a mailing list (and presumably after you've scoured the MySQL manual) will save you time and the potential flaming from the list members.

For MySQL debugging assistance, check out the list of MySQL Gotchas, http://sql-info.de/mysql/gotchas.html. This page covers oddities you may encounter while using a MySQL database.

MySQL tools

For interacting with MySQL, I generally use either the mysql client or phpMyAdmin, www.phpmyadmin.net, but these are not your only choices. There are quality open source and commercial applications available for any platform. I'll mention a smattering of them here.

To start, MySQL AB, the company behind MySQL, has created a GUI application called the Query Browser. It's freely available for Windows and Linux (www.mysql.com/products/query-browser).

MYdbPAL, www.it-map.com/html/mydbpal_.html, is a highly regardedand free!tool for Windows. With it you can design and administer your databases. Webyog, www.webyog.com/sqlyog/index.php, provides similar functionality and is available in both free and cost versions.

The free (personal edition) dbSuite, www.dbsuite.de/dbsuiteAdminTool.html (Figure C.10), runs on both Windows (2000/XP) and Mac OS X. It provides a method for administering and creating databases, as well as an alternative way of running queries. Mac OS X users can also use the free CocoaMySQL, http://cocoamysql.sourceforge.net, or YourSQL, www.mludi.net/YourSQL (Figure C.11).

Figure C.10. The very professional dbSuite is a graphical alternative to working with MySQL through a command-line interface.

Figure C.11. YourSQL is a popular application for interacting with MySQL on Mac OS X.