Rating: 
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: This book has more errors in it than any technical book I've ever bought. There was obviously no one knowledgable about the subject editing or reviewing the contents before publication. Publishing under the O'Reilly name is NOT a guarantee of quality anymore!
Rating: 
Summary: Look elsewhere for MySQL help
Review: This is the least useful of any O'Reilly I've purchased to date. Rather than repeat the list of problems already enumerated by other reviewers, Let me instead recommend DuBois' "MySQL" from New Riders, ISBN 0735709211. A bit more expensive but it blows Yarger's effort away.
Rating:
Summary: What a waste of money
Review: Don't waste your money on this one. First of all, who cares about mSQL in the first place? It's dead. Secondly, most of this book is useless filler: 227/487 pages are reference, and in the book chapters proper, there are things like long lists of sites to ftp distributions from, lists of 3rd-party software (these can be found directly via web search, and the ones here are most likely out of date), enumerations of all the command-line options and what they mean (duh, like aren't these in the docs?). Also, there are numerous typos, many of them causing confusion e.g. 'Indexing one character fields works best when the field is fixed length' (should read 'on' instead of 'one'), field lengths of 55 vs 255 for the same field, etc. Also, what I was interested mainly in was an introduction to MySQL using JDBC - this chapter is woefully inadequate, nothing more than paraphrased technical documentation, and they don't even have the decency to put the example guestbook servlet code in the book, much less discuss it (get it from the o'reilly website) The one nice discussion was on database normalization, but then being ignorant on the subject, I probably wouldn't know a bad one if I saw it.
Rating:
Summary: It's okay, but I knew SQL already.
Review: It wasn't much help with using utilities like sqldump and such. And it didn't help out much with MySQL, which is what I use the most. It mostly covers MSQL and only mentions MySQL, it seems. But as a query reference, it has worked just fine.
Rating: 
Summary: A very useful reference
Review: I must admit I am perplexed at the poor ratings this book has received. I've found it to be a good reference and full of interesting material. I've been developing applications using Mysql intermittently for over a year, and this book always proves to be helpful when I begin working with it again.
Rating:
Summary: Not up to O'rielly Standard
Review: After purchasing several O'Rielly books, I had a good expectation on this one. I was simply dissatisfied using this book. Most of the CGI interfaces did not work for me (until I brushed them up) and the book is not very well organized. My partner had the same comment on this. Does not provide a clear picture of mSQL and MySQL databases, In fact I found some web site tutorials more useful. Although this book has some material in it, it should be reviewed carefully to present them in a better way.
Rating:
Summary: Great for beginners
Review: I am setting up a web based intranet site at my company. Oneof our linux gurus told me to use MySQL and handed me this book.Before I started reading this book I had never played with any database program. This book explained the concepts of relational databases so well, that my database gone from a simple database to a somewhat complex database that has many extra features to help my company. If you run a small business and need a web based database. Go with MySQL, and buy this book!
Rating:
Summary: this book is weak
Review: Wether you're experienced with web databases or not, (and everyone who uses one of these open-source databases is using it for web) this book is a disappointment. A large amount of the content is filler, which would be much better filled with a general overview of relational databases and SQL structure, which is really badly represented. For instance: the book will tell you how to implement joining and indexing with SQL language, but it won't tell what that's for anywhere. As for an experienced web db builder (which I am now,) the book is an incomplete reference of the SQL language and db admin tasks, such as performance, backups, etc.
Rating:
Summary: Ultimately disappointing, but there are some good parts
Review: Like other reviewers, I was also disappointed with this book. I believe it was the first MySQL book to be published, and like other first books on an Internet/technology topic, it feels a little rushed, in that it lacks depth. While others have discussed the flaws (and I don't disagree with them), there are a few good things about this book: * It's reasonably well-written and edited (if a little shallow). * There are some good (light) examples. * I liked the section that compared mSQL and MySQL with the other free databases, and explained what was missing in each. (In a nutshell, Postgres is more robust and full-featured, while MySQL is considerably faster.) Ultimately, I can't recommend this book (which saddens me, O'Reilly's books are among my favorites). If you want more SQL info, go with The Practical SQL Handbook (or SQL for Smarties, if you're advanced). If you want more MySQL info, go with Paul Dubois' book.
Rating: 
Summary: Reference only. Not an intro... A little overpriced..
Review: I started using MySQL since I wanted a database that didn't cost alot (free on Linux) and it was the database that my hosting provider used. I picked up this book just as a base reference to MySQL/mSQL and it has served that purpose. I've been a DBA so I wasn't looking for an intro to SQL and databases, which this book is not, as evidenced by it being in the Nutshell series. A little overpriced for what it's useful for, but if you already know SQL and relational databases, it is a decent reference guide for both MySQL and mSQL, especially of their limitations (no stored procs, foreign keys, etc).
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