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MySQL Database Design and Optimization
This book focuses on MySQL 4.0/4.1 but also gives consideration to v.3.23 users as well as a nod toward v.5. The layout of each chapter gives a description of the topic of the chapter, followed by the meat of the chapter, a summary and what's next (how the context of this chapter ties into the subject of the next). There are numerous "notes", cautionary flags, tips, screen shots, code examples as well as thoughts from each author that provide explanatory asides to the content. The authors also provide references to other volumes, as needed.
A glance through the table of contents will give the reader a precise overview of what to expect in this book: Review of MySQL Basics; MySQL Column and Table Types; Keys, Indexes and Normalization; Optimizing Queries With Operators, Branching and Functions; Joins, Temporary Tables and Transactions; Finding the Bottlenecks, MySQL Programming; and Looking Ahead.
Chapter 1: Review of MySQL Basics gives a very quick (under 50 pages) summary of how to connect to the MySQL server; MySQL's identifiers and naming conventions for databases, tables and columns; a review of MySQL's syntax, writing basic queries and using basic commands (create, drop, select, insert, update, delete); and a discussion of the use of table, column and expression aliases. This section, while adequate, is clearly intended as an analysis of core information necessary to proceed to further chapters.
Chapter 2 follows with MySQL Column and Table Types, which deal with datatypes and structures used to store the data. The goal here is to help the reader design effective tables (and therefore create a well-designed and efficient database) suited to the particular type of data at hand. Numeric types are covered in depth; strings, the null value, ENUM and SET are also addressed as well as common "gotchas" and developer errors.
Keys, Indexes and Normalization come naturally in Chapter 3, with optimal data handling the goal: the chapter addresses getting data in efficiently and getting the results out efficiently, eliminating redundant data, appropriate uses of indexes and common index creation errors.
The core of the book is clearly Chapter 4, "Optimizing Queries with Operators, Branching, and Functions." Here, optimization skills are honed; manipulation and filtering of data is one of MySQL's strengths and this chapter shows the reader how to replace less-than-ideal program logic with SQL constructs to precisely adjust query performance. There's a good demonstration here of outputting a list of member data to a web page. The ultimate goal in this chapter is to provide the reader good skills that translate into better efficiency and faster database interaction. As the authors point out, one obvious logical consequence of this is easier migration between platforms and programming languages.
The next reasonable step is to look at additional features that MySQL has up its sleeve that will save the developer time and effort in the overall scheme of application development. Chapter 5, "Joins, Temporary Tables, and Transactions" discusses three of these additional features. The authors carefully point out that each of these eliminate excess queries needed to pull data, decrease code overhead, minimize the need to store data as application logic, decrease the number of bugs that appear in code and help guarantee data integrity (an aspect of database design that unfortunately often takes a back seat to other priorities as developers are often not concerned with the validity of data in a real world sense; i.e. from the user's perspective).
Chapter 6, "Finding the Bottlenecks," addresses modifying system configuration variables outside of the default and how these can dramatically affect performance. The authors look at some available free tools that help monitor server performance and enable configuration changes including mytop, WinMySqlAdmin, phpMyAdmin and the new MySQL Administrator (available from MySQL AB). MySQL caching capabilities and the ability to decrease repetitious read/writes to disk (good table, key and query caching within MySQL) are discussed. Finally, database interoperability and abstraction layers are mentioned in terms of performance penalties vs. making life easier for the programmer.
MySQL Programming is the topic of Chapter 7, where a very good discussion of the MySQL API is provided. There are a lot of useful examples in this chapter covering many of the common MySQL APIs available (PHP's MySQL and MySQLi, Pythons's MySQLdb, ODBC, Perl's DBI), along with feature discussions and examples.
The final chapter, "Looking Ahead," examines MySQL v.4.1, 5.0 and 5.1 and some eagerly awaited new features, including stored procedures, stored functions, views and triggers.
This is a well-rounded volume on MySQL design. There are excellent examples and the flow of the text is conversational without being rambling and unstructured. The authors have obviously taken great pains to minimize tangents and extraneous information; pithy, but with sufficient detail in mind. The reader is left with neither the sense of being overwhelmed nor longing for an explanation for a glossed-over topic. This book is pretty much a "must have" for a MySQL programmer looking to bridge the gap between novice and professional.
You can purchase Beginning MySQL Database Design and Optimization from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
3) It's probably already available at your hosting provider, whereas Postgresql probably isn't (vicious cycle with #1)
MySQL is not easy. Need a subquery? You're out of luck, pal. A FULL JOIN? Sorry. Check constraints? No dice. Throw an error instead of taking a bad guess when you've fatfingered an input? Oops. And God help you if you need some trigger logic for auditing purposes, because MySQL AB certainly won't.
What part of "A well regulated militia" do you not understand?
mySQL may not be appropriate in a mission-critical situation, but that does not make it bad for all situations; if you need speed in prescedence of everything else then mySQL is probably the right tool for the job. If you need data integrity, ACID compliance etc then PostgrSQL, Oracle etc are the right tool for the job.
Outright saying one or the other is a POS only makes you look stupud.
There's mischief and malarkies but no queers or yids or darkies within this bastard's carnival, this vicious cabaret.
Then why not use PostgreSQL? For companies it's cheaper (MySQL licence for commercial use is almost as much as the basic Windows 2003 Server Licence), and for open source lovers it's even more free.
And that of course ignores the fact that it's also technically superior - faster, proper data integrity, and real SQL (sorry, but for an SQL programmer, the kiddie pool syntax available in MySQL is The show stopper)
MySQL is the very thing open source is supposed to be against - software being used just because everyone else is using it, without regard for if it actually has any merit. MySQL is the Windows of the database world.
That is NOT a list of "common gotchas" (the misleading name of the page aside), it's an anti-MySQL rant that has lived on far too long.
Please, can we for once have a post about a piece of software on Slashdot without the pro-X or anti-Y folks flocking to it to bash or praise it? Can we just for once talk about the damn book?
Seriously, is there any other reason for these MySQL book reviews? They all sound the same, and who buys books on MySQL optimization anyway? The manual and 'EXPLAIN' should be enough for anyway.
Enough ranting, continue your too-highly-moderated offtopic flamewars.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
How is this a rant? Are you saying the problems they list don't exist?
I like that site cause it contains no spin: it just lists the facts and provides references to the documentation. Is it the facts that bother you?
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Okay, why?
In the database world, there is a solid, underlying foundation: relational theory. This was developed, what, 30 years ago? It has *provable* characteristics.
So when you want a database, pick the one that has the most of those characteristics. Unfortunately, most folks seem to think it's Emacs vs. vi. Just pick the one that "feels" better, or that they learned first. That's fine for text editors, but not, say, for the foundation of a mission-critical finance system.
I assume you only code in assembler?
Agile Artisans
Database design should be a generic RDBMS book for the most part. It does not make much sense to repeat table design techniques and philosophy for each RDBMS product. (However, giving vendor-specific tips and limits is understandable.) It might be cheaper to purchase and write a generic book about table design because it can be written and printed for multiple products. Then again, many publishers simply copy-and-paste semi-generic topics with slight custom tuning.
Table-ized A.I.
Views, synonyms and referential integrity (foreign key constraints) would be very nice too.
When I find out why VHS became more popular than technically superior Betamax, I'll figure out why Mysql is more popular than Postgres.