MySQL: Building User Interfaces

Craig Maloney writes "If you are a Windows programmer looking to create or move your stand-alone database applications away from Microsoft-specific tools such as Visual Basic, Visual C++, Access or SQL Server, MySQL: Building User Interfaces is written just for you." Read on for the rest of Craig's review. MySQL: Building User Interfaces author Matthew Stucky pages 632 publisher New Riders rating 4/10 reviewer Craig Maloney ISBN 073571049X summary MySQL and GTK+ are used to create cross-platform applications, with copious code listings.

What's in the book? The first chapter guides the reader through the basics of MySQL and how it compares to Access 2000 and SQL Server 97. Next, a code listing demonstrates the basics of connecting to MySQL via C using the MySQL C API. the book gives an all-too-brief whirlwind tour to the basics of MySQL. The next four chapters are a tutorial on how to use GTK+ and GLADE, focusing on how these toolkits are similar and different from their Visual Basic counterparts. GTK+ was chosen in this book because of its cross-platform compatibility with both Windows and Linux / UNIX operating environments. The second part of the book takes what was learned about MySQL and GTK+ with GLADE and uses it to create a stand-alone application (a real-world order-entry application). What's Good? Throughout MySQL: Building User Interfaces, Stuckey describes exactly what he is doing and why he is doing it that way. The introduction to GTK+ in the first part of the book describes just about every GTK+ widget available (menus, buttons, sliders, status bars, etc.), and creates a monster busy-box application (not to be confused with the busy-box application by Bruce Perens) demonstrating those widgets by themselves. Later in the book Stuckey uses Glade to put applications together, but not using Glade early on gives the reader a chance to see what is happening under Glade's abstraction. During the building of the order-entry application, Stuckey explains the design decisions behind the widgets. Each window of the application is introduced first with a diagram describing where the widgets will be followed by the code for each widget. The design looks like a Visual Basic application designed by a a programmer, with an eye toward the functional rather than the aesthetics of user interface design, but as an introduction to GTK+ programming it works well. What's Bad? If there was ever a book that required a CD-ROM to accompany it, this book gets my nomination. Authors have to walk a fine line between presenting code snippets that don't make sense by themselves, or risk boring readers with page after page of code that might confuse readers who aren't yet ready to view full code listings. MySQL: Building User Interfaces chose to include the full code listing for everything. This is both a blessing and a curse: readers have the code right in front of them and don't have to worry about being in front of a computer while reading the book, but the flow of the book is interrupted every time something is introduced.

The descriptions also suffer, because those code listings are expected to explain in more detail what is going on. In the GTK+ introduction, widgets are introduced with short paragraph introductions. The real-world application, which should be the focus of the book, reads like an assembly line: A screen is introduced, the widgets are placed, and the code is listed. Worse, files which make little sense without a computer (such as files generated by glade) are presented along with the code listings. This makes reading this book a chore. Thankfully, there is an FTP site with the code ready to use, but future versions of this book would be best served to include it on disc.

Perhaps a balance can be struck in a future edition where important code concepts are highlighted without sacrificing seeing the code in a meaningful context.

So, what's in it for me? Windows programmers who need a hand in getting their applications to Linux or UNIX may find this book helpful (but overwhelming) as they learn. This book stands out as a bridge for Windows programmers to make their transition to Linux and UNIX smoother, but the emphasis and amount of code listings in this book may make Windows programmers choose a different route.

You can purchase MySQL: Building User Interfaces from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Try SQLite

[hendridm]

MS Access has the advantage (on Windows machines anyway) of being a stand-alone database without needing a service to be installed. For a app where you don't want to have to install MySQL server and have it waste resources, you might consider SQLite. Unlike MySQL embedded, it's release under the public domain. MySQL Embedded is licensed under the GPL and has the following requirement:

... any program which includes, by linking with libmysqld, the MySQL source code must be released as free software (under a license compatible with the GPL).

Although, depending on what you want to do with the software, this may not be a problem. I'm all for free and open source software, but a brother's gotta eat too.

Re:Try SQLite

[Mod Me God Too]

I do a little DB development. The basic difference is a DB system like MySQL, Oracle or SyBase is that the 'DB' is the back-end (indeed it is a server-type process) which is interrogated by SQL statements (the front end may be built in C++, VBA, whatever), whereas something like Access is an all-in-one solution with the back-end and the front-end in the same app mish-mashed together (it may purport to be SQL-like, but only from within the app, not as a server) - I think MS still provide Foxpro as Access simple can't hack really big work. So an SQL-type database is the classic client-server, Access and Paradox don't seperate front and back ends (they say they can be split, but that is a bit of a bodge job).

Wikipedia has a more thorough discussion here (for SQL) and here (databases in general but quite a read)

Re:Try SQLite

[jcoleman]

I'm all for free and open source software, but a brother's gotta eat too.

Hope you like Indian food!

Coleman

Re:Try SQLite

[Frymaster]

he service is started at boot time and runs all the time, wasting resources unless you manually stop it.

right. think "daemon".

microsoft just uses the word "service" because sco owns the word "daemon".

MySQL Feature Set

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Before all the naysayers start in on what a flaky database MySQL is, how it doesn't do this or that, that it just a toy, please visit their web site and see what its current feature set is.

Make sure you use MySQL version = 4.0

[spun]

Before that, the dang thing doesn't support nested subqueries, or any kind of subqueries on inserts and deletes. Found that out the hard way recently (the docs don't make it very clear) and had to rewrite a bunch of elegant SQL as less elegant Perl loops and wacky joins.

Still, I love MySQL. Postgres is more full featured, but for the smallish web-based applications I write, it's overkill.

Re:Make sure you use MySQL version = 4.0

[ttfkam]

And it provides so little in the way of data integrity, that you'll have to spend that much more time adding the necessary functionality into your app layer.

Example? Okay, whip out your MySQL client and type with me...

CREATE TABLE test (
id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY_KEY,
num1 INT,
num2 INT NOT NULL,
num3 INT
price NUMERIC(4,2),
code VARCHAR(8),
);

INSERT INTO test VALUES (
0,
99999999999999,
NULL,
'A quick brown dolphin...',
21474.83,
'ABCDEFGHIJK'
);

...now after this, it should have given you a message like:
"Query OK, 1 row affected"

Seems to me that the data was a collection of square pegs to round holes, but MySQL never even dropped a warning.

So let's check out that table again:

SELECT * FROM test;

1 row with the following is returned.

id: 1
num1: 2147483647
num2: 0
num3: 0
price: 999.99
code: ABCDEFGH

Now stop. Take another look at the table definition. Take another look at the inserted data. Take another look at the output. Take another look at what has been stored in your database. Let's sum up: your primary key (your lookup key!) is not what you expected, the numbers are all different from what you entered, the price does not conform to your data schema (should be a maximum of 99.99), and your character string has been truncated...ALL WITHOUT AN ERROR OR WARNING.

More examples at MySQL Gotchas. All of this in MySQL v4.0 and above. None of this crap happens in Firebird 1.5, PostgreSQL 7.x, or any popular closed source relational database.

...and it is crap. You have crap data in your database, and MySQL never let you know. For those of you out there who never ever write code with bugs, there's no problem; Go on ahead using MySQL. (Then again, you're in high demand for senior, very well paying jobs using Oracle or DB2 in Fortune 100 companies if that's the case.) For all the other folks out there (which includes everyone out there doing web development with dynamically typed languages like Perl and PHP), MySQL will happily insert crap data.

And yes, there's a PostgreSQL Gotchas page. Tables are lowercase by default, and it requires the "AS" keyword for column aliases. Look at that list for PostgreSQL. Look at that above example. Can someone say with a straight face that these lists are comparable? Can someone say with a straight face that they want to explain to the computer-phobe why they got 2147483647 in their data? Can someone say with a straight face to their boss that these errors are acceptable in a production environment?

Interesting Book

[saberworks]

I read most of this book (maybe an older version?) last year. I found it very interesting because it basically gave me the idea to let the staff members of my web site update the site through a windowed interface as opposed to a web interface. MySQL doesn't have to be running on the same computer as the program is running on, so this would be simple. That way you could provide a rich client (for staff members, not end-users) to update a web site based on MySQL.

I know, it's not an original idea, but it's interesting because the book was a nice, step by step guide to doing just this. For what it's worth, I enjoyed it.

On the other hand, I ended up spending time with XUL instead.

Kexi is also worth checking out.

[anonymous coword]

It is an open source program similar to Microsoft Access. It works with MySQL too. It even runs on Windows.

Re:windows developers

[BinaryCodedDecimal]

if you are a windows programmer then you must be retarded

I know many retarded people that would be offended by that statement.

Seriously though, making sweeping statements like that just makes it obvious that you were never good enough for the high school debating team...

Why does OSS love MySQL?

[t_pet422]

I don't get why so many people are stuck on MySQL. It's lacks some very, very basic features: Views, Triggers, Stored procedures, nested selects. Sure, they promise support for all this in future version, but PostgreSQL supports it NOW. If you want a full-featured open source database, don't use MySQL, use Postgres.

Re:Why does OSS love MySQL?

[Tassach]

I too wonder about the inexplicable popularity of MySQL. It fills the microscopic niche between a lightweight ISAM database and a real full-featured relational database. I've yet to see MySQL used for something that couldn't have be done better with another tool.

Postgres is pretty good, but still (IMHO) not yet up to the level of a commercial RDBMS. If you want a full-featured free-as-in-beer datacenter grade database, use Sybase 11.0.3.3. It doesn't come with source, but come on now, how many MySQL zealots have ever even compiled from source, let alone modified something?

Both are replacements for MS SQL Server

[ttfkam]

...if you don't use transactions, stored procedures, triggers, views, sequences (read: real ones), or if you actually want your database to be typesafe and have your insert/update to throw an error (or at least a warning!) on invalid data. Otherwise MySQL is most certainly not a viable replacement, although the codebase which used to be called SAPDB is. Firebird also qualifies for a replacement.

Also, if you need advanced XML querying tools for your database, none of the open source RDBMSs can currently act as a reasonable drop-in replacement for MS SQL Server.

If you don't need any of those features (and especially haven't actually used any of them in existing code), then MySQL could be added to the list of open source RDBMSs that fit the requirements for your project.

Re:Both are replacements for MS SQL Server

[Valar]

MySQL has transactions. It has for QUITE awhile. In fact, I write code that uses MySQL transactions everyday. Stored procedures are availible (will be availible?) in version 5.

Re:Both are replacements for MS SQL Server

[damiena]

Firebird? It can do databases, too?

That browser can do everything!

Use Access as a GUI for mySQL!

[Mr. Cancelled]

For a content management system I've developed, I prototyped all of the basic functionality by using Access as a GUI for mySQL. And I loved it! I actually considered doing the whole thing this way for a bit as it offered so many of Access's strengths (quick and powerful GUI building, familiar environment, everyone has it, etc.), but was combined with mySQL's stability, scalability (Well... For the needs of my target audience at least), and versatility. All's you need to tinker with this is the free MyODBC package, and suddenly your mySQL database is seen as a standard ODBC one. You can build table relationships within Access using mySQL based source data. You can locate the mySQL server anywhere you want (local or remote), point Access at it, and there ya go. Additionally you can now use VBA within Access to take advantage of many Active-X components, as well as a wealth of freely available VB code. There were several reasons I went back to my original plan of just prototyping in Access, and deploying via a web-based setup:

1. Obviously not everyone has Access. Many do, or have access to it via work or school (access to Access?!?)
2. There were certain things that were easier to implement in an HTML-based setting (conversely, there's things I still can't equal that were accomplished easily using VB & Active-X. Things such as a customized file browser with a built in image viewer)
3. While some of my VB code and Active-X'ing would have been transferable to the web, it would have required requiring that the user of my system use IE to administer it. Not gonna happen!
4. I just don't like Microsoft enough to make my product only available to users of their software. The above IE example would have required my admins to IE; Access would require users to have Access; Having Access implies that the user must also run Windows (Wine just isn't there for Access usage I'm afraid. At least not for very advanced usage)

But for other projects I have, who's target audience is Windows users, Access is a great way to quickly build some impressive mySQL-based applications. IMHO, of course. 8)=