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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
For beginners! Please read the table of contents or ask me., June 19, 2002
This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself MySQL in 24 Hours (Paperback)
I am the author of this book, and I am offsetting the negative review from the user in Japan and offering a little advice on book selection. First, I don't mind negative reviews; this is my 4th book and I've found that with books, as in life, one person may hate something and one person may find it to be the most wonderful thing they've ever laid their eyes on. As with any book whose purpose is for beginners to learn about a product, do not buy it if you are already using the product or if you want to learn one very specific thing. If the user in Japan had read the table of contents, he would have seen that this is not a book that will teach you how to connect to MySQL via JBDC or C++. That would be in a Java or a C++ book, or an advanced book on MySQL. Better yet, it's in the manual. Many times in this book -- which does have useful examples, expecially for a beginner -- the reader is told where to go for advanced information...namely, the MySQL manual, list, and elsewhere... Please choose wisely. This is not the be all and end all MySQL book, nor is it meant to be. But it will teach the fundamentals of database design, MySQL operations, MySQL administration and even connectivity with PHP and Perl...in 24 hours. Best, Julie.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good Intro, July 25, 2002
This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself MySQL in 24 Hours (Paperback)
Like Julie Meloni said, "Teach Yourself MySQL in 24 Hours" is designed for beginners. I picked it up with the intention of learning the basic MySQL commands so that hopefully I could write PHP scripts that interact with databases. Much to my surprise, this book not only gave me all the commands I could ever want, but it also provided chapters on using PHP and Perl with MySQL. One other plus, Meloni wrote this book at almost half the size of other introductory texts.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nice tutorial, October 28, 2002
This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself MySQL in 24 Hours (Paperback)
When a friend of mine asked me to evaluate this book she said, "Hey, Mike, you teach computers. Would you please look this book over and tell me if I've just wasted my money." This was a bad day and I almost answered, "I don't teach computers. I teach people to use them." I'm glad I didn't because she then said, "You know, I like teaching books written by women. They're easier and they aren't filled with bad geek jokes." I mentioned this conversation to my wife and she muttered something about male egos and of course women are better teachers. This isn't universally true but the incident caused me to look over my bookshelf and notice that a disproportionate number of introductory titles were authored by women. With the computer field having a hugely male membership, why would so many of my computer texts be written by women? I'm not complaining. Elizabeth Castro has helped me through HTML. Robin Williams got me thinking design. Molly Holschlag has a couple of titles on my shelves, and so on. To this list I'm glad to welcome Julie Meloni. Her writing is straightforward, her handling of the material shows a clear, methodical progression in her introduction of concepts. She takes a lot of the mystery out of the subject of MySQL database implementation. This is a nice beginner's tutorial that should give a solid foundation. Starting with database theory she progresses through the design process and onto using the database. As she says, "This is not rocket science." And if one takes the time to work through the examples, he or she should come out with a working knowledge of MySQL. As with all the Teach Yourself in 24 Hours Series books, this is a tutorial and not an encyclopedic reference book. For reference you will have to consider buying something fatter. I like "MySQL" by Paul Dubois. So if you like to learn a subject through graduated lessons, this is a good buy, costing about half what some other MySQL books cost. Of course you do lose something with the lower cost. I noticed a couple of errors in the example code. The technical editing is just not as good as you will find from some other publishers, like O'Reilly and New Riders. From what I've read in other reviews that seems to be a problem with Teach Yourself books in general. However, if the reader is paying attention such mistakes shouldn't pose too great a problem. I would have also liked to have been able to download the example code from the web. But since I didn't buy the book in the first place, I really can't complain.
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