Creating your MySQL Database: Practical Design Tips and Techniques: A short guide for everyone on how to structure your data and set-up your MySQL database tables efficiently and easily. [Paperback]

Marc DeLisle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 25, 2006

If you're creating a dynamic web application using open-source tools, then you're probably going to be setting up a MySQL database. Getting the design of this database right for your application and its data is vital, but it's often an intimidating and little-known process for non-developers and developers alike. Written by the creator of the popular phpMyAdmin tool, this book is a short but complete guide on how to design good data structures for MySQL. Anyone working with applications that use a MySQL database backend will benefit greatly from the advice and techniques in this book. Although a working knowledge of both SQL and MySQL is assumed, the book is suitable for both beginners and intermediate users alike. Whether you read it through and absorb the advice or work through it on a live project, the efficiency and maintainability of your databases will certainly improve as a result.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Marc Delisle is a member of the MySQL Developers Guild - which regroups community developers - because of his involvement with phpMyAdmin. He started to contribute to this popular MySQL web interface in December 1998, when he made the first multi-language version. He has been actively involved with the phpMyAdmin project since May 2001 as a developer and project administrator. He has worked since 1980 at Coll¿ge de Sherbrooke, Qu¿bec, Canada, as an application programmer and network manager. He has also been teaching networking, security, Linux servers, and PHP/MySQL application development. In one of his classes, he was pleased to meet a phpMyAdmin user from Argentina.

Product Details

• Paperback: 108 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (November 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1904811302
• ISBN-13: 978-1904811305
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,249,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It just kinda let down halfway through, July 22, 2008

By 

TexanInWashington (Monroe, WA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Creating your MySQL Database: Practical Design Tips and Techniques: A short guide for everyone on how to structure your data and set-up your MySQL database tables efficiently and easily. (Paperback)

This book starts off with a real bang, working you through the logic of how you would structure your data in a MySQL database. It works through two examples, a car dealership's needs for tracking the details about particular cars and their sales, and then a simplistic schema for storing airline flight information. About halfway through this book, you feel like you're really learning a lot of information, and then the second half just seems to mainly cough out some table definitions. I can't quite put my finger on exactly what went wrong about halfway through, but that's about the point where I felt like I stopped learning from this book and was just reading the remainder of what the author wanted to get regurgitated before he hit his page limit.
You probably won't come away from reading this book with any more confidence in your ability to structure the tables of a database than before you started reading it. Some good info. Overall - disappointing.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I found this to be very helpful, February 5, 2009

By 

Jesse Schutt (Westboro, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creating your MySQL Database: Practical Design Tips and Techniques: A short guide for everyone on how to structure your data and set-up your MySQL database tables efficiently and easily. (Paperback)

This book was very helpful in explaining the basic concepts. It is not an exhaustive manual on how to structure databases, but instead it is a great place to start learning.

Another element that I found valuable was how the author pointed out some common pitfalls in designing databases. Those are the kinds of things that only come by experience. If I hadn't read this book, I can see that there are several of the pitfalls that I would have fallen into.

I appreciated the many examples and illustrations. For some reason this author connected with my style of learning. It was fun to read!

My summary would be that this is a great place to start learning MySQL database design. It encompasses the basics and does a very good job explaining the concepts in plain and easy to understand language.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Light on content and value, June 23, 2008

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Creating your MySQL Database: Practical Design Tips and Techniques: A short guide for everyone on how to structure your data and set-up your MySQL database tables efficiently and easily. (Paperback)

In a nutshell, this book is pretty worthless. Potential readers would be much better off with the "MySQL Tutorial" book.