Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself MySQL in 21 Days

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Don't buy this book. Go buy "MySQL" by Michael Widenius (New Riders Publishing). It's the best MySQL book out there. The O'Reilly Netshell book by Yarger, Reeses, and King is second. This book is a *distant* third out of three.

I was shocked at the number of typos and other editing errors. I found many of the sections to be poorly glossed over. A good example would be db backups. The first, last and most important thing any DBA should know is how to backup data and restore that data.

The section on backups was cursory and lacking important details. --log-update was mentioned for incremental backups, but how/when the logs should be flushed wasn't metioned. I would have preferred to see an entire crontab, incremental+full backup sequence including a restore from one day or a restore of the entire data.

Another very light brushing over was optimization. At least one paragraph could have been spent to give the user ideas on how MySQL will benefit from putting logs, tables, and indices on multiple disks, rather than dismissing the reader to go research somewhere else. The auhor had another excellent opportunity to help the reader understand how queries are handled by a deeper discussion on optimizing the WHERE clause in queries. But this section received less than half a page and delt only with the unlikely situation of a single index being searched on.

The coverpage reads, "Learn the skills and conepts to *master* MYSQL...". This is a gross overstatement of what this book will give you. I would have sent it back to Amazon.com if working out the shipping wasn't such a pain. Not worth the money. You would better spend your time throwing playing cards in a hat.

This book just doesn't live up to half of my expectations. The author just says : do this, do that whithout a lot of explanation. Furthermore, the CODE is ALL WRONG in this book. I like the other 'STY in 21 days' books but I'm sorry I bought this one.

Wrong Code : p. 63 : INSERT INTO mysql... should be INSERT INTO host (see figure 4.6) p. 64 : INSERT INTO user... 'Y') should be INSERT INTO USER... 'Y'); p. 64 : INSERT INTO db ... 'Y') should be INSERT INTO db ... 'Y'); p. 79 : Smoker CHAR(0) should be Smoker ENUM('Y','N') DEFAULT 'N' (see figure 6.2) p. 82 : USE DATABASE Temp; should be USE Temp; p. 84 : DROP tablename; should be DROP TABLE tablename; p. 85 : DROP Customers should be DROP TABLE Customers; ... And I'm only at Day 6 ...

Typos galore

I know I'm throwing fuel on a bonfire, but this book [stinks]!

HUNDREDS of errors and misinformation. I tried to return the book but found out if I open the CD it is non-returnable.

The only reason I opened the CD was to get a file that WASN'T EVEN ON THE CD!

Next time I will read the reviews on Amazon first.

I have to say, I love the teach yourself series from SAMS. They are always a comforting way to learn a new computer language. This book is pretty much the same, as far as it got me up and running in just a week, however, I do have many gripes with the book. First of all, there are a ton of problems with the commands you are supposed to type. About 3-5% of them are incorrect. They are only minor problems like putting TABLE in the "CREATE tablename;" command and stuff like that, but for a newbie, those mistakes are unforgiveable. They were easy to get around, only because you have to get the command to work in order to get to the next section. Which leads to my second gripe. If you like to follow through these books from the beginning to end, you might have trouble here and there because the author will issue an action, like rename this table to another name, then two paragraphs letter, you are asked to perform an action on that table with the OLD name. Not a biggie, but still annoying if you want to get through the book in 21 days. I still like the book though, but geez, where's the editor? Did they lay-off their editing staff at SAMS?

This book is a good read. Sit down with it for a few days, and afterwards, you should know a great deal about MySQL. It covers everything in a very presentable fashion, and is pretty darn fluid. Something rare in technical books. In fact, this is probably the best book out there for MySQL.

Unfortunately, when it comes time for implementation, some parts are really bare. The normalization chapter is pretty short and cryptic, though it provides a good introduction to the subject. When it comes to looking up specifics, the warm fuzzy feeling from reading the book slowly melts away. Trying to look up specifics becomes a real hassle (e.g. creating relations between tables), and it doesn't go into great detail on more complex issues (e.g. installing MySQL).

This is a great introductory book. It's a nice read, and the language is good. This is not, however, a good reference manual. Despite that, I would still highly recommend this book.

Don't buy this book. Poor editing, poor code examples, faulty installation (or I should say, non-existent) guide for installing on Linux, are among the primary complaints.

I come from the Microsoft world of development, and have been looking for ways to expand into the Linux realm. I had been hearing a lot of talk about the MySQL project and wanted more information.

I feel that this book is a great tool for developers who either want to create cross-platform database solutions or are new to database technology. Also, the CD included with the book contains lots of goddies. Everything you need to get started (including MySQL itself) is on the CD.

Thanks, Mark, for a wonderful guide to MySQL!

What this book is and what this book is not?
This is not a book neither mysql, nor sql language, nor database management.
Examples are left unexplained, some critical topics are left uncovered, others are left to author's intuition, chapters are bad organized, there is a sense of non-logical organization all over the book. If this is your first book about mysql, you will "teach yourself" nothing about mysql. If not, you simply don't need this book. I suggest to spend money for this book to buy an ink cartridge and some paper to print out the official mysql manual. This book has definitively no mean.

Unbelievably poor proofreading. I started seeing a couple of typos in the first chapter, and decided to highlight them so that I could let the publisher know, but now my book has more highlighting than I did in any of my college textbooks! I stopped counting once I reached 100 errors and typos. Some major ones, too, such as "DROP tablename" (page 84) which should be "DROP TABLE tablename". That's a pretty important command, and the editor (author?) can't get it right? It's a good thing that I had O'Reilly's "SQL in a Nutshell" book for reference because otherwise I would be completely stuck.

It's one thing to have a book that is fluid and easy to read, but when dealing with programming and technical learnings, the code and examples are, in my opinion, more important than if it's another "MySQL for dummies". If the code isn't right, the book doesn't work. When I have a question about MySQL, now, I refer to ... rather than this book (which I paid money for).

Bottom line: Wait for the 3rd edition. There are multitudes of better MySQL books out there until the publisher releases at least a 3rd edition of this book (with all typos corrected).

Also, if 95% of the reviews for this book are 1 or 2 stars, and two reviews give it 5, why does it have an overall score of 3 stars? That's not right.

This book is poorly written (I can't believe an editor even looked at it!) and full of sloppy errors. Even it this wasn't the case, it would not compare well with other more authoritative and accurate title's such as "MySQL" by Paul DuBois.