MySQL Database Design and Optimization

norburym (Mary Norbury-Glaser) writes "As the title suggests, Beginning MySQL Database Design and Optimization is intended for the range of users between novice and professional. It may seem difficult for one book to suit such a wide readership without losing readers on either end of the spectrum, or perhaps without providing adequate coverage to any particular audience, Apress has done what many other publishers have failed to do by providing an excellent series of 'novice to professional' books. An example of their dedication to detail and perfection is the inclusion of top-notch technical reviewers (Mike Hillyer, in this case, often found haunting Experts Exchange as one of the top MySQL experts) who provide expertise to the series. Authors Jon Stephens and Chad Russell have extensive combined PHP and MySQL experience that shows in the content of this volume. Readers with some MySQL experience who desire a broader range of instruction will gain much from this book. Experienced users will find quite a lot of valuable information that will extend their existing knowledge base. Concepts in design are better learned from the beginning to avoid repeating poor programming mistakes, but it's never too late to learn good practices." Read on for the rest of Norbury-Glaser's review. Beginning MySQL Database Design and Optimization author Jon Stephens and Chad Russell (Technical Reviewer: Mike Hillyer) pages 520 publisher Apress rating 8 reviewer Mary Norbury-Glaser ISBN 1590593324 summary 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.

Comments

MySQL table still huge after deleting most records

[exhilaration]

I know this is kinda off topic, but it is kinda about optimizing MySQL, but I deleted 60% of the rows in a 60MB MySQL table on my webhost and the size hasn't changed. Is there some command to "pack" the space?