Sebastopol, CA—MySQL has held steady as one of the great open source success stories, and there is no indication that this will change in the foreseeable future, in spite of its recent acquisition. "Although MySQL AB has recently been purchased by Sun Microsystems, the software and the organization has remained intact," reports author Russell J. T. Dyer. "The software will only get better now that the company has the money to expand its software engineering department. More importantly, the software will be broadly adopted by larger companies now that it has the backing of a multi-billion dollar company like Sun. Sun can assure large companies, institutions, and governments that MySQL is here to stay and that it's fully supported."
MySQL aficionados confirm that this is indeed the case, making the new second edition of Dyer's book, MySQL in a Nutshell (O'Reilly, US $34.99) even more timely. "There have been several changes to MySQL since the first edition: in particular the stabilization of version 5.1 of MySQL," says Dyer. "I wanted to expand the book to include the changes and improvements to MySQL. This new edition includes the many new features such as stored procedures, stored functions, triggers, and views."
Dyer, who is the longtime editor of the MySQL Knowledgebase at MySQL AB, notes that his intended readers are beginning to intermediate MySQL developers, as well as advanced developers who need an easy-to-follow, quick-reference book on MySQL.
"Although there are quite a few other books on MySQL available, much of the praise I received from the first edition was related to easy-to-understand explanations and especially due to realistic examples I provide in the book," says Dyer. "Building on these factors, for the second edition I've provided examples for every SQL statement and function. For many I've given more than one example and I think that I've given much better examples to help the reader."
And he adds, "With Sun involved now, MySQL will absorb much more of Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server's market shares. As it is now, there seems to be a shortage of MySQL developers in the world. Readers who want to take advantage of this rapid growth will need to improve their skills in MySQL and will need the tools to do it. I like to think my book can help fill this need."
In addition to covering all the commands and programming information for version 5.1, including new features and language interfaces, the book contains:
- A thorough reference to MySQL statements, functions, and administrative utilities
- Several tutorial chapters to help newcomers get started
- Programming language APIs for PHP, Perl, and C
- Brief tutorials at the beginning of each API chapter to help anyone, regardless of experience
- level, understand and master unfamiliar territory
- New chapters on replication, triggers, and stored procedures
- Plenty of new examples of how MySQL is used in practice
- Useful tips to help readers get through the most difficult subjects
For a review copy or more information please email kathrynb@oreilly.com. Please include your delivery address and contact information.
Russell Dyer has worked full-time for several years as a free-lance writer of computer articles, primarily on MySQL.
Additional Resources:
For more information about the book, including table of contents, index, author bios, and cover graphic, see the catalog page for MySQL in a NutshellMySQL in a Nutshell, Second Edition
Russell Dyer
ISBN: 9780596514334, 564 pages, $34.99 USD, £21.99 GBP
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