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

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.

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

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)=

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?