About the Versions Used for This Book

Open source software has many advantages. One of the most compelling benefits is the speed at which new features and bug corrections arrive. Of course, this makes writing a book about an open source product line like MySQL a bit of a challenge: Things change so rapidly that what is true and cutting-edge today might be the software equivalent of a leisure suit or pet rock tomorrow. With that said, we've tried to use the most recent MySQL versions on a variety of platforms, as described in the following sections.

MySQL Versions

In the 4.1 series, we've tested our recommendations with versions ranging from 4.1.6 through 4.1.11. For the upcoming 5.0 series, we've used 5.0.0 through 5.0.4.

Operating Systems

Unlike MySQL products, operating systems move at a slower release pace. For this book, we've installed MySQL products on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Red Hat Fedora Linux, and Debian Linux.