Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management: Increase your MySQL productivity and control by discovering the real power of phpMyAdmin 2.11 [Paperback]

Marc Delisle (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1847194184 | ISBN-13: 978-1847194183 | Publication Date: March 18, 2008

This book is an upgrade from the previous version that covered phpMyAdmin Version 2.8. Version 2.10 introduced a new GUI for relations, called Designer, and version 2.11 adds support for creating Views from query results, manages triggers, procedures and functions and has an improved interface for servers handling large number of databases/tables. Whether you are an experienced developer, system administrator, web designer or new to MySQL, phpMyAdmin is a must-have tool for anyone who needs to manage MySQL databases and tables. This book is a must-read for every serious phpMyAdmin user who would like to use this outstanding application to its full power.

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: 340 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (March 18, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847194184
• ISBN-13: 978-1847194183
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,681,681 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well done, Marc!, June 30, 2008

By 

Stefan Priebsch "e-novative" (Munich, Germany) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management: Increase your MySQL productivity and control by discovering the real power of phpMyAdmin 2.11 (Paperback)

Marc starts off by explaining how to install and configure phpMyAdmin on Windows and Linux. Given a working LAMP or WAMP platform, any reader with basic PHP skills should be able to get phpMyAdmin up and running really quickly.

After a first overview over the user interface, the author explains how to create databases and tables, and how to enter data. A quick overview over phpMyAdmin's querying capabilities concludes the "First steps" chapter. Next, the author dives into changing data. I was surprised to learn that phpMyAdmin has a multi-row editing feature.

The "Changing Table Structures" chapter deals with how to edit table definitions and the various column types like TEXT, BLOB ENUM, and DATE. This chapter also deals with index management, and explaining queries.

Chapter 7, "Exporting Structure and Data", deals with exporting databases. Though I personally have never seen the value of exporting a database to anything else than SQL, I was rather surprised to learn that phpMyAdmin supports exporting to PDF, Word, Excep, Open Office, Latex, XML, or YAML format.

Consequently, the next chapter deals with importing structure and data. Due to various server limits like timeout, or limitations of the file upload size, this is not always as easy as it might seem. The author explains the problems and shows ways to circumvent restrictions, which I think is very important, as I see quite a few users in the field struggling with importing large database dump files.

Chapter 9 deals with searching the database, without having to write SQL statements. I was not aware, for example, of the possiblity to search all database tables for strings or even regular expressions. The next chapter covers table and database operations, including table maintenance, renaming tables, moving and copying tables, appending data to a table, and even copying a whole database, which can be an interesting alternative to creating a backup before upgrading it. The database backup feature is complemented by the possibility to rename a database, thus allowing you to create a backup and potentially restore it without having do download and upload SQL dumps.

Chapter 11 introduces the relational system. Since MyISAM tables do not support key relationships, phpMyAdmin can optionally administer information about table relations. The author explains how to set up phpMyAdmin to do this, and continues by introducing the Designer, which is an ajaxy tool to work with table relationships, foreign keys, and check the referential integrity of a database.

Of course, a chapter on how to write SQL statements with phpMyAdmin can not be left out from a book like this. The author explains how phpMyAdmin helps the user to write SQL statements, and shows how an external SQL validator can be used, to make sure that the statements conform to the SQL standard. He then dives into creating multi-table queries, which is where more complex criteria and joins come into play.

Next, the author explains bookmarks, a way of storing statements for later reuse, just like browser bookmarks. In that chapter, I was surprised to learn that phpMyAdmin even allows changing the default initial query that is executed when the table is browsed.

Following a short chapter on how to create database documentation in tabular or PDF format, mime-based transformations are explained. Mime-based transformations allow you, for example, to configure phpMyAdmin to display thumbnails of images stored in the database, format dates, create links, or display strings in hex format, which can be useful to debug issues with different or wrong character encodings. These transformations were, admittedly, completely new for me, and I think they may in fact be one of the most powerful features phpMyAdmin has.

Towards the end of the book, the author covers an important topic, namely character sets and collations. He explains the differences between MySQL versions before and after 4.1, and then continues with a short introduction of new features in MySQL 5, like views, stored procedures, triggers, information_schema as the standards-compatible way to access meta data, and profiling.

This chapter is followed by "MySQL Server Administration", which comprises of user and privilege management, retrieving database information, and checking the server status. The book is concluded with a Troubleshooting chapter that gives hints on how to solve common errors.

I like the book for its straight and logical structure. The author's explanations are short and to the point, so the user is provided with the right amount of information to get going with phpMyAdmin. I would strongly suggest to have a basic level understanding of database theory (tables, relations, keys), as the author does not give any theoretical background, but just shows how to make use of the features in phpMyAdmin.

For $34.99, you get 300+ pages packed with information about all aspects of phpMyAdmin. I must say that the book's layout is not one of the most beautiful ones I have ever seen, and some screen shots could be of better quality, but this does not really affect the reading experience too much. I can definitely recommend this book, and according to the phpMyAdmin website, it is also available in various translations like Czech, German, Italian, and Spanish.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I didn't realize phpMyAdmin could do so much -- thanks for the informative book!, January 18, 2009

By 

M. Helmke - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management: Increase your MySQL productivity and control by discovering the real power of phpMyAdmin 2.11 (Paperback)

I am the sole person responsible for seven websites that use MySQL databases, and have worked on the back end of several others. Over the years I have worked on these databases in many different ways. I've done it from the command line, via ssh. I've done it using PHP scripts within the software being run on a site. I have also used phpMyAdmin. Each method has applications and moments where I would prefer using it to the others at my disposal.

I have generally used phpMyAdmin only in those moments when I had something quick and simple to do, or when a hosting company did not provide ssh or command line access. This was mainly because I did not realize how powerful and flexible the software can be.

I didn't realize how amazingly easy it is to configure this program, and how much you can do with phpMyAdmin. The book starts with the basic foundation of installation and initial configuration, then walks you through the steps of using it in your unique setting. The author makes a note of default settings as well as some that are likely preset to other options by web hosting providers. It clearly outlines how to change those defaults if you are using the software on a server you own or control.

Mastering phpMyAdmin is clearly written, using easy to comprehend examples, with a chapter structure that begins without the need for previous knowledge and takes you to uses and procedures that are far beyond the needs of most of us. That's cool! It is always my preference to have more information at my disposal than I am likely to need, rather than the other way around. With this book, I can't imagine needing to look up any other documentation source to figure out how to create, manipulate, check, repair, backup, restore, optimize, or otherwise interact with a MySQL database.

It is my opinion that this book would be very helpful to people who are completely new to database and website administration, who perhaps already have access to phpMyAdmin through their web hosting provider through cPanel or Plesk, or have the permissions on the server to install it themselves. As an intermediate (definitely not guru-level) admin, I found the book a helpful and enjoyable way to discover new uses for the software as well as new ways to configure it to remove limitations I had previously encountered, such as only being able to import sql files smaller than 2 Mb. If that sounds interesting, take a look at the book info on the publisher's website or persue a copy at your local bookstore.

4.0 out of 5 stars phpMyAdmin in the Real World, May 28, 2009

By 

Blane Warrene "Technologist" (Midwest) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management: Increase your MySQL productivity and control by discovering the real power of phpMyAdmin 2.11 (Paperback)

Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management: Increase your MySQL productivity and control by discovering the real power of phpMyAdmin 2.11

This is both a timely and largely timeless book for web developers and administrators who work with MySQL and PHP. While the software will change from time to time on a normal release schedule - the baseline functionality will remain intact.

Marc Delisle did a fine job of balancing his analysis and content for both beginners as well as more seasoned veterans to database administration. The book encompasses installation, setup, getting started and standard functions as well as more advanced capabilities of phpMyAdmin.

There are really four key areas where, from my own experience as an analyst and web administrator, the majority of issues and questions surface when using MySQL.

1) Configuration
2) Administering users and permissions
3) Maintaining and equally as important backing up and restoring databases or tables
4) Advanced techniques (using SQL and querying) and reporting

Configuration
Mr. Delisle handled the configuration of the system well, clearly illustrating how most users will use phpMyAdmin on a single server. I was relieved to see his coverage of multi-server setup and attention paid to secure methods of authentication in this multi-server mode.

I felt this was clearly defined and easy to replicate when testing the "how-to" approach to this topic. This allows administrators a simple way to handle multiple databases on multiple servers if they are servicing clients who require dedicated installations for their data.

Users and Permissions
This was one of my own biggest stumbling blocks when I started using MySQL and there were not many easy to use tools to simplify these administering efforts. phpMyAdmin deftly handles this core function of managing MySQL. This is covered in detail in Chapter 19.

Database and Table Maintenance
One of the challenges of the web world is that most administrators charged with overseeing the web presence of smaller business or hobbyists are not by trade database administrators. phpMyAdmin enables a novice administrator to tackle some of the key tasks - such as indexing larger tables to improve performance, importing tables via SQL, exporting data and even backing up and restoring.

There is an entire community committed to just educating on database tuning and maintenance and phpMyAdmin provides the tools for doing so as the administrator develops this knowledge base.

Advanced Techniques
One of the benefits of a good how-to guide is that is graduates progressively from getting started to an appendix of advanced techniques. As users build confidence with phpMyAdmin they can take advantage of the guidance in this book on tasks requiring multi-table queries, creating views, triggers or stored procedures (specific to MySQL 5.x).

Overall, this title provides comprehensive coverage of phpMyAdmin due to Mr. Delisle's long career in maintaining and developing with MySQL.