Nearly every non-trivial application requires data persistence, and for an application of any significant size and scope, persistence is typically achieved using a database. If you’re building or maintaining any significant application and are using MySQL, this book is for you. For open source and other types of projects, the MySQL database is a very popular choice: it’s free, fast, robust, and scalable, and it runs on all of the major platforms, allowing maximum use of available hardware resources. But it’s easy to disregard MySQL’s speed and other advantages if your database design is inefficient. Needlessly duplicating data, using improper types for columns, overloading a single table where multiple tables should be used, failing to leverage the calculation features of MySQL, and making multiple queries instead of an efficient single query are some of the common mistakes.
Beginning MySQL Database Design and Optimization shows you how to identify, overcome, and avoid gross inefficiencies. It demonstrates how to maximize the many data manipulation features that MySQL includes. This book explains how to include tests and branches in your queries, how to normalize your database, and how to issue concurrent queries to boost performance, among many other design and optimization topics. You’ll also learn about some features new to MySQL 4.1 and 5.0 like subqueries, stored procedures, and views, all of which will help you build even more efficient applications.
| Ch. 1 | Review of MySQL basics | 1 |
| Ch. 2 | MySQL column and table types | 45 |
| Ch. 3 | Keys, indexes, and normalization | 113 |
| Ch. 4 | Optimizing queries with operators, branching, and functions | 171 |
| Ch. 5 | Joins, temporary tables, and transactions | 239 |
| Ch. 6 | Finding the bottlenecks | 273 |
| Ch. 7 | MySQL programming | 315 |
| Ch. 8 | Looking ahead | 417 |
Anonymous
Posted Sun Nov 14 00:00:00 EST 2004
If you already know the basics of MySQL, then this book can be a nifty boost to your productivity. The authors plow straight into giving good tips for better table design. For example, the first chapter covers MySQL basics. But it furnishes very understandable advice. Like never using spaces in identifier names. While MySQL permits this, it greatly increases chances of logic errors. Later in the book are far more complicated tips. Crucially, on how to optimise complex queries. While SQL notation is standard across vendors, each database has different ways to best phrase queries. So since you have committed to using MySQL, it helps to know what are best here. The authors also instruct in how to hook up to external languages like PHP, Perl and Python. (What is it about all these languages that start with P?) Each has its adherents and is quite popular. So they try to give coverage of the combinations with MySQL.
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Overview
Nearly every non-trivial application requires data persistence, and for an application of any significant size and scope, persistence is typically achieved using a database. If you’re building or maintaining any significant application and are using MySQL, this book is for you. For open source and other types of projects, the MySQL database is a very popular choice: it’s free, fast, robust, and scalable, and it runs on all of the major platforms, allowing maximum use of available hardware resources. But it’s easy...