A lifetime supply of thanks to:

The wonderful people at Peachpit Press. My sincerest thanks to everyone there (and at Pearson) for their dedication to putting out quality books, for giving me these opportunities to publish, and for everything else they do. Specifically, I would like to thank Nancy Aldrich-Ruenzel, Marjorie Baer, Kim Lombardi, Gary-Paul Prince, and the other two dozen people whose names and jobs I may not know but should.

This book's editor, Rebecca Gulick. My job is easier and the book is better when I have the pleasure of working with you. I am very fortunate to have had that opportunity once again.

Bob Campbell, for his spot-on copy editing and attention to detail.

Pat Christenson, Production Coordinator Extraordinaire, for turning a disparate collection of text files and images into a usable, physical book.

Owen Wolfson, Compositor, and Karin Arrigoni, Indexer, for the work they do, which I almost understand (but not quite).

The readers of my other books who took the time to let me know how much they appreciated them (even if they followed that up with a support question) and for requesting that I write a MySQL book. I hope it's everything you were looking for.

Finally (whew!), thanks to everyone in the MySQL communityfrom those at MySQL AB to the participants of the various mailing lists. MySQL is yet another example of how great open source technology can be! Special thanks goes to Alexander Keremidarski, for his time and excellent technical review. I feel so much better having a person of your knowledge review everything!