MySQL 5th Edition

This is an excellent and very complete resource for developers and admins who already know the basics and have some experience with databases, and want a very detailed and complete reference book with lots of great tips and insights on MySQL. I'm a front end developer with *some* MySQL/database experience, so I was basically able to keep up with the *dense* technical-documentation-like content in this book, and I learned a ton about the features and capabilities of MySQL. However, this was NOT a great starter book for a beginner like me as it's essentially a detailed feature-oriented book with lots of theoretical examples, but almost no explanation of database design, and limited examples of how to use MySQL in a real-world application. This will be a fantastic long term MySQL reference on my bookshelf, but right now I've already ordered 2 more beginner-level books to help me apply all the features I now learned about from this book towards actually designing databases for my own applications.

Though not currently a developer, I wrote a lot of C a 25 years ago. This book was a nice middle-ground between a basic tutorial and a reference manual. The explanation is a bit verbose, but consequently easy to read through. The organization is a bit bizarre: one subsection goes into deep detail on alternative engines, with historical underpinnings and applications where one's queries are more efficient than the next; the next subsection goes into utterly elementary syntax for basic expressions. It goes back and forth without concern for the order in which information should be presented to make it relevant. There's a reason some stuff goes in the back of the book.A more unfortunate difficulty applies to the Kindle edition: the code examples don't lay our correctly, often rearranging symbols. I could usually figure it out , but this is a critical flaw for a book on programming syntax, where accurate character-by character presentation is the heart of the subject. Would be 2-stars if Amazon allowed rating of the specific version, rather than 4 for the book as a whole.

Overview:-great for mysql beginners.-great chapter on CAPI and example code is free and legal https: http://www.kitebird.com/mysql-book/.-get the paper version because kindle version has problems.Lifesaver for a school project I was working on written in C. The chapter on the C API was better than anything I could google up. If you only need that chapter (the C API) it's free and legal at the book's website http://www.kitebird.com/mysql-book/. You can also find all the example code there.If you have little or no experience setting up and using mysql I would recommend buying the book anyways. Get the paper version. I bought the Kindle version and the indexing (kindle navigation) isn't fine grained enough to navigate quickly, since you will often need to do so when treating this as a reference book. The characters in the code examples also appear disordered, for example you will see "p-" instead of "-p". If you have command line and programming experience, you can easily figure it out, if not you're screwed.

This was a great buy for a couple of reasons. First was the price; it cost a lot less than the print edition I bought two semesters ago at the college bookstore($75). I was still using that edition because of the wealth of knowledge it has on writing SQL syntax. However for $18 dollars I thought why not; I'm tired of lugging the printed version around all the time. This was truer than I knew at the time. My kindle(the old one) weighs a heck of a lot less than the book; I get a newer version with any updates that are included; and it's as easy to find the subject area on my kindle as it is to look in the table of contents in my book.

I am an intermediate MySQL user looking to master it. I've been using MySQL on a daily basis for years. This book is very comprehensive and thorough. However, it lacks the organization that makes a technical manual easy to read and reference. It dumps all the information on it's topics all in the same section and it doesn't break it up into beginning-intermediate-advanced. You can't read this book fluently and hope to retain much - it needs to be studied and poured over. Not the experience I hope for. If your a beginner I would recommend you look elsewhere because it is too tough and unpleasant a read, and as for the intermediate / advanced for the same reasons another book for be more useful to reference.

This is a good book for beginners. For more experienced folks you won't be learning a lot from the book, but it is a useful reference book. A lot of the content can be found on the web, but sometimes it is good to just sit down and have a "read'.As soon as the beginner jumps into MySQL they will also find the MySQL Workbench - - - which is a nice IDE to work with but it is NOT covered in this book. I would give it more stars if it addressed the GUI interface.

I'm only on page 79, but have already learned much, even on a newer version of MySQL. The writing is clear and concise. So far, not a single page wasted. If this book continues this way all the way to the end, then wow: rewards to the student and kudos to the teacher.

Comprehensive, complete and written for an expert on mysql with many years of experience. One of the best compendium on mysql. Not the first book i've purchased on this topic, but worth the money. Best of all, forget to carry the book to work and back home. With kindle for pc , available everywhere!!!