With more than 4 million active installations, MySQL is the world’s most popular open-source database.

Known for its speed, high reliability, and ease of use, MySQL is rapidly becoming a low-cost alternative to high-priced, high-maintenance database systems from Oracle, IMB and Microsoft-and it already has more users than any of these more established proprietary databases.

The MySQL Language Reference is the only official guide to the MySQL language and programming APIs.

Written by the creators of MySQL, and edited by the highly respected MySQL authors, the MySQL Language Reference is designed for database administrators and programmers who need a reliable, detailed reference to every part of the MySQL language and all the available APIs.

With more than 4 million active installations, MySQL is the world’s most popular open-source database. Known for its speed, high reliability, and ease of use, MySQL is rapidly becoming a low-cost alternative to high-priced, high-maintenance database systems from Oracle, IMB and Microsoft-and it already has more users than any of these more established proprietary databases. The MySQL Language Reference is the only official guide to the MySQL language and programming APIs. Written by the creators of MySQL, and edited by the highly respected MySQL authors, the MySQL Language Reference is designed for database administrators and programmers who need a reliable, detailed reference to every part of the MySQL language and all the available APIs.

Printing Web Pages
If you are seriously considering purchasing this book, you should be aware that aside from some typical publisher’s mumbo jumbo up front, this is a hardcopy format of the online MySQL Documentation already available via the web. The language of THAT work has always been a little tortured; but once you spend some time with it, it does get the point across.

I don’t want to imply this book is without value - it isn’t. If nothing else, the covenience of having it in this format is worth something - I’m just not sure $40 is the right number.

All You Need - What More Can I Say.
I first looked at using MySql in a web application back around 2001 or 2. Using it would have required a port of the SQL statements. And I decided not to use it. The application I was porting had lots of statements that used SubQueries, and MySql didn’t support these. Yes, I could have re-written all the statements using joins and other methods, but what a lot of work.

As a result, when I was first flipping through this book I found a section - Subquery Syntax. In that section, the first example showed a nested SELECT statement that had four cascaded subqueries. So I sat down in the bookstore and started reading this section. Subqueries took a dozen pages to describe, and included enough information that I found myself learning a lot about subqueries that I didn’t know. (I’d point these things out, but then you’d just think I was pretty dumb.)

Then I looked for a few other things that I’ve had trouble finding with other DB books: Reserved Words (go try to find the reserved words in Access for instance) they are the last couple of pages in Chapter 2. Replication - it’s there. Everything I looked for was there.

Let’s net this out. This book is $40 (that’s list price, but you know better than that). The software is ZIP - just go to www.mysql.com, click on developer and download the version you want (Linux in a bunch of versions, Windows, and several versions of Unix). The price is still ZIP. You want to upgrade to the next version, yup, cost is ZIP. Less than $40 is your total investment.