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Summary: O'Reilly Does it again!
Review: This book is great for the new and maybe even helpfull for the expert. I am new to the MySQL world and after running through half this book, I can shoot with the best of them. It covers everything from setting up MySQL to Administration and maintenance. If you are getting into MySQL, go to Starbuck's, get a venti iced mocha and sit down with this book. You will not regret this purchase.
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Summary: Excellent Reference for MySQL database programming
Review: This book has been so helpful. Not only is it a great MySQL reference, but it also covers many relevant topics as SQL, Perl DBI, HTML Forms, CGI Programming, PHP, etc...
Rating: 
Summary: Good for Experienced Geeks
Review: I found the book to be useful to help me get running with MySQL. It also has some unexpected sections on CGI programming, PHP, and Perl usage that came in handy for me. For me, it is just about what I wanted. However, it's probably not a great book for newbies.
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Summary: I want my money back
Review: I gave this book a lot of patient effort because I wanted desperately to learn from it, but it is horrible. This is the most frustrating computer book I have read. It doesn't take you step-by-step through any examples. What programs are provided don't work. The authors skip back and forth between mSQL and MySQL (and accidentally mix them up many times). They say things like, "This program... allows only for adding new tests. Viewing tests and changing tests is not implemented but is left as an exercise.... Completing this script should be only a moderate challenge." Excuse me, but that's why I bought the book. If I could do things myself, I wouldn't need the book. And instead of showing us how MySQL differs from mSQL, the authors simply state, "The only 'glitch' is with sequence generation. Remember that where MySQL automatically generates the next ID for the test table because of the AUTO_INCREMENT keyword, mSQL expects you to create a sequence on the test table and SELECT the _seq value before doing your insert." Thanks for the help!
Rating: 
Summary: good companion book
Review: This book is not a complete guide to MySQL/mSQL. Like all computer books, it doesn't cover everything you need to know, you need some other reference. However, if you combine this book and the reference manual on mysql web site. It will get you going. Beside, designing a database is more than just know the command and syntax, there is a lot of theories behind it. Use this book as a companion to the reference and some other database design books, you can pretty create a big db system.
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Summary: this book stinks!
Review: I've never had a bad experience with an OReilly book before, but I did with this one. The book consists mostly of general information related to databases and the material on Mysql/msql is only slightly, if that, better than the material found on the unix man pages.
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Summary: Not for the novice...
Review: Well, this is a good book in my opinion, despite what the other reviewers may say. There are a few caveats... the examples, while "good", are filled with errors, which can be confusing to people who are complete beginners, and don't know better than to realize whomever reviewed this book, was blind. The online MySQL handbook is also quite good, and this is a decent companion to it.
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Summary: incomplete. unhelpful
Review: This book is NOT written to help its reader to understand and use either MySQL or mSQL. It is very sketchy and short on explanations. The worse part of the book is where George Reese, the Zarathustra wanna-be starts his semi-philosophical ramblings which has nothing to do with the book title. Don't waste your money on this one.
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Summary: It was exactly what I wanted
Review: I disagree with many of the reviews I've read here."MySQL & mSQL" was EXACTLY what I hoped and expected it to be: a detailed discussion of what was unique to just those two database products. If you need to learn SQL, normalization, schema design, query optimiziation, etc, go buy one of the dozens of books already out there -- they apply to MySQL as well as Sybase, Oracle, etc. However, if you're like me and you already know SQL and relational database concepts, then all you really want to know is how MySQL/mSQL implement them and how you go about executing statements, running queries, and extracting results from your programming language of choice. I needed to know: what datatypes MySQL supports; what RDBMS features it does/does not provide, and how to get at them; how the peculiar MySQL security system operates; and how to access MySQL from Perl and Java. It answered every one of my questions comprehensively and succinctly. Exactly as it should have.
Rating: 
Summary: Not helpful enough to get started with MySQL.
Review: I bought the book to help me get started using MySQl. I did not really find the information I was looking for. I still ended up searching the websites to figure out how to do things. This book is a good all around reference, but to actually use it to better understand the database is a mistake.
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