techie (book) request

[mickeym]

Can anyone rec a good (preferably not-real-expensive) book on how-to with SQL/MySQL? I'm floundering, and the text my prof is using is...useless.

I'd really like something on the order of the Shelly Cashman Series. A clearly-stated, step-by-step on how to do something.

Anyone?

Comments

[kitanabychoice.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I have no book recommendations (I've yet to buy a book on that topic), but I have a couple of sites that I've used to get myself up to speed for work purposes.

SQL Quick Reference (http://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_quickref.asp)
Learning SQL Server (http://learningsqlserver.wordpress.com/)

Hopefully these are of some help to you. :)

[nrrrdy-grrrl.livejournal.com]

I read that as "Squirrel/My Squirrel".

PHPMyAdmin

[bun18.livejournal.com]

My other half is good with computers and recommends playing around with this:

http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/index.php (http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/index.php)

If you've got a windows computer, you could run http://sourceforge.net/projects/webserv/ which should give you a webserver, with all attendant supporting software like MySQL, PHPMyAdmin, etc. PHPMyAdmin is handy because it's a database administration tool which can manage both structure and data, and everything you do to a database will be displayed as a query on the results page. You can run any query using plain text input systems, and see the results.

Don't learn on Microsoft Access if you intend to use proper SQL, because it's internal database engine is both pathetic and doesn't really stick to the SQL standard (most of the more complex operations like left joins or subqueries either don't work at all, or don't work as documented.)

I don't understand any of that but I hope it helps.

[kaiz.livejournal.com]

This is my go-to reference: SQL in a Nutshell (http://www.amazon.com/SQL-Nutshell-Desktop-Quick-Reference/dp/1565927443). Also, I can suggest the free W3Schools tutorials (http://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp) as well, which give some "try it yourself" interactive lessons.

These SQL Cheat Sheets (http://www.sqltutorial.org/sql-cheat-sheet.aspx) are good, too.

Additionally, you might want to check out MySQL's MySQL Workbench (http://www.mysql.com/products/workbench/), available for Mac and Windows. It's got a really nice GUI interface that lets you build schemas/database tables/etc. interactively and then automatically generates the SQL needed to build the resulting database. Very good for testing your understanding of things as well as for just doing small-ish scale, quick-n-dirty database development.

Also, feel free to give me a call about this, and other programming-related, stuff; I'd be happy to help you out.

[quiet000001.livejournal.com]

My dad uses SQL/MySQL (one of those) as the database engine for all of the custom stuff he does, and he is actually a really good teacher, for all that I bitch about him. He's good at figuring out how someone understands something (or doesn't understand it) and rephrasing what he's trying to say in a way that will make sense for them.

I don't think he used any particular books as such for reference (though I will ask) but if you want to email him or call him just let me know.