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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
MySQL & mSQL, January 12, 2000
This review is from: MySQL and mSQL (Paperback)
When I was considering purchasing this book, there were only three reviews available. One review thought the book worth the reviewer's trouble - the other two consigned it to the trash-can of history. So I closed my eyes, crossed my fingers (of my non-mouse hand) and clicked the Add-to-Shopping-Trolley button. I'm glad I did. I now have a hard-copy, handy reference to MySQL and mSQL, that covers installation, setup and configuration of the software. It covers programming access to the two database engines, too, with overviews of the Perl::DBI and Python modules. Accessing data with PHP is given a brief look too. The documentation accompanying Perl, Python and PHP are the ultimate references, so I think it unreasonable to expect more than an overview focussing on any more than the the database engine interface. I needed a small to medium database engine with a CGI interface and/or an SQL interface. MySQL and mSQL both seemed to fit the bill - but which one would be best for MY purposes? I hadn't had the time to visit their respective web-sites and read the on-line documentation. This book, if I guessed O'Reilly's intent correctly, and if my reading between the lines of the few reviews available was correct, would give me both the information I needed to choose between them,and the installation, setup and use coverage I would also need for the chosen engine in a handy reference form - I assume the chosen engine will come with more comprehensive information. The book is exactly what I expected. It is written for the experienced (intermediate to advanced) system administrator/dba (data base administrator) enabling them to quickly install and set up a medium-sized database engine. The tools provided to administer the database server are also covered sufficiently for the experienced. If you expect to learn SQL, Database administration, database query programming and more, then you will be severely disappointed. I give the book 4 stars. It may be worth more, but editorial and proof-reading errors (O'Reilly books used to be better) interrupt one's reading. The example code has occasional errors but then I didn't expect it to be gospel but rather an illustration of how-to. I was a little bemused at first by the switching back and forth between the two engines. As I read more, I came to appreciate the approach of treating MySQL and mSQL as one and highlighting the differences between them. If you are a webmaster, have some programming experience, some dba experience and are at home in the L-Unix environment, then you will find the book useful.
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32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very disappointed., February 26, 2000
This review is from: MySQL and mSQL (Paperback)
I was very disappointed with this book. So were two coworkers who have looked at it. This book is not up to the traditional O'Reilly quality. (In fact, I'm annoyed enough to say that Que should have published this book...) Only about 30% of the book is useful material. Most examples and explanations are sketchy -- almost useless. If you already knew SQL, there's very little to learn from this book. If you didn't know SQL, this book does a poor job of teaching it to you. If the book stuck strictly to mSQL and MySQL, it would have been about ~150 pages of content. The rest (about 300 pages) is a "reference manual" for various (PHP/Perl/Java JDBC/C/Python) languages' support for MySQL/mSQL. Again, if you didn't know the concepts already, you would have a hard time learning useful stuff from this book. Still, I have to admit to using the book every so often as a handy "at-my-fingertips" reference book. For that, I am glad that I have it. But I don't think it was worth the price I paid.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It was exactly what I wanted, November 2, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: MySQL and mSQL (Paperback)
I disagree with many of the reviews I've read here. "MySQL & mSQL" was EXACTLY what I hoped and expected it to be: a detailed discussion of what was unique to just those two database products. If you need to learn SQL, normalization, schema design, query optimiziation, etc, go buy one of the dozens of books already out there -- they apply to MySQL as well as Sybase, Oracle, etc. However, if you're like me and you already know SQL and relational database concepts, then all you really want to know is how MySQL/mSQL implement them and how you go about executing statements, running queries, and extracting results from your programming language of choice. I needed to know: what datatypes MySQL supports; what RDBMS features it does/does not provide, and how to get at them; how the peculiar MySQL security system operates; and how to access MySQL from Perl and Java. It answered every one of my questions comprehensively and succinctly. Exactly as it should have.
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