Whether you're running a business, keeping track of members andmeetings for a club, or just trying to organize a large and diversecollection of information, you'll find the MySQL database engineuseful for answering questions such as:

    Which are my top ten fastest-selling products?
    How frequently does this person come to our facility?
    What was the highest, lowest, and average score of the team last season?

MySQL, the most popular open-source database, offers the power ofa relational database in a package that's easy to set up andadminister, and Learning MySQL provides all the tools you need toget started. This densely packed tutorial includes detailedinstructions to help you set up and design an effective database,create powerful queries using SQL, configure MySQL for improvedsecurity, and squeeze information out of your data.

After covering the basics, the book travels far into MySQL'ssubtleties, including complex queries and joins, how to interact withthe database over the Web using PHP or Perl, and importanthouse-keeping such as backups and security.