Rating: 
Summary: Poor guide to database UI design
Review: I'm not sure where all of these 5 and 4 stars are coming from. This book is absolutely horrible at addressing UI design. Half of the book is C code for GTK applications that could have been made available on a companion disk or on the website. And most of Stucky's explanation of things comes in the form of very brief comments embedded within the code. Lots of typos. Lots of butchered examples. No general GUI concepts covered. No coverage of multithreading issues. You're basically getting three non-real-world examples' code bound in a book and hardly any coverage of general user interface design concepts and ideologies. The title should have been "Beginner's Guide to Using GTK with MySQL and Glade".
Rating: 
Summary: a book that delivers
Review: I've been working through this book for quite some time, and now that I've extracted all i can I have to declare myself delighted with it. The examples are good, deep enough to convey the lessons but shallow enough that not too much is irrelevant. I now have, as the author promised, several applications that will compile easily under both linux and win32. If i can fault the book at all , my only reservation is that is would have been nice to see all the necessary software included on the cd. Downloading all of the required applications and libraries (particularly for windows) led to a treasure hunt accross the web. That aside I would recommend this book to anyone who is not new to programming and databases, a little prior knowledge will be required as this is definately not a complete beginners book.
Rating: 
Summary: MySQL: Building User Interfaces "using GTK"
Review: If you have a fairly strong background in 'C' programming (understanding pointers is required), and you are familiar with SQL, and you work on a Linux platform or plan on working in Linux, and you would like to use GTK for the user interface, then this book is for you. If you just looked at the title of the book, you would expect a generic explanation of how to design and build user interfaces and how to build connectivity to a MySQL database. This is all true, but more specifically, the book uses GTK solely for building user interfaces. "MySQL: Building User Interfaces" starts with an introduction to MySQL, proceeds with comparing MySQL to other databases, and then instructs the reader in building connectivity to a MySQL database. After the reader gets a good taste of MySQL, a nice introduction to GTK follows. It includes an extensive widget tour, which is a do nothing program that shows how to code the various widgets available with GTK. The rest of the book gets very deep into working with GTK, 'C', and MySQL. GTK is like Visual Basic for Linux. In the Visual Basic world you would use C to build a dll that gives you connectivity to a database. With GTK, you use 'C' to connect to a database (MySQL in this case). GTK (GIMP Toolkit) is a library for creating graphical user interfaces. It's an object-oriented API that is written in 'C' and uses classes and pointers to functions for accessibility. For a better explanation on GTK and a great place to start learning it, including downloading, point your browser to http://www.gtk.org/tutorial/ch-introduction.html. While the author does a very good job of teaching GTK, the website has some additional information for getting started with GTK, including its own tutorial. Overall, the book has extensive information for building GUIs with GTK and MySQL, with plenty of examples and screen shots. It's definitely geared toward a narrower audience. But, it you are a programmer with a background in 'C' and would like to build an application with a GUI, I would strongly recommend using this author's methodology of using GTK and MySQL
Rating:
Summary: MySQL: Building User Interfaces "using GTK"
Review: If you have a fairly strong background in `C' programming (understanding pointers is required), and you are familiar with SQL, and you work on a Linux platform or plan on working in Linux, and you would like to use GTK for the user interface, then this book is for you. If you just looked at the title of the book, you would expect a generic explanation of how to design and build user interfaces and how to build connectivity to a MySQL database. This is all true, but more specifically, the book uses GTK solely for building user interfaces. "MySQL: Building User Interfaces" starts with an introduction to MySQL, proceeds with comparing MySQL to other databases, and then instructs the reader in building connectivity to a MySQL database. After the reader gets a good taste of MySQL, a nice introduction to GTK follows. It includes an extensive widget tour, which is a do nothing program that shows how to code the various widgets available with GTK. The rest of the book gets very deep into working with GTK, `C', and MySQL. GTK is like Visual Basic for Linux. In the Visual Basic world you would use C to build a dll that gives you connectivity to a database. With GTK, you use `C' to connect to a database (MySQL in this case). GTK (GIMP Toolkit) is a library for creating graphical user interfaces. It's an object-oriented API that is written in `C' and uses classes and pointers to functions for accessibility. For a better explanation on GTK and a great place to start learning it, including downloading, point your browser to http://www.gtk.org/tutorial/ch-introduction.html. While the author does a very good job of teaching GTK, the website has some additional information for getting started with GTK, including its own tutorial. Overall, the book has extensive information for building GUIs with GTK and MySQL, with plenty of examples and screen shots. It's definitely geared toward a narrower audience. But, it you are a programmer with a background in `C' and would like to build an application with a GUI, I would strongly recommend using this author's methodology of using GTK and MySQL
Rating:
Summary: Great - but don't let the title fool you
Review: Let me say this right away: This is a good book. If you already know your way around MySQL and have at least a basic knowledge of C, you'll very quickly get up to speed in creating a MySQL GUI (GTK+) application for your co-workers or your client.
The introduction lays out some of the foundations, and the reader is warned that some skills are required before delving deeper into the book: Basic knowledge of C, SQL, Linux are all required to gain anything from this book. Some experience in VB, Delphi or other form-based IDEs will also give you a good start on the book.
The first section of the book gives a good run-down on MySQL, GTK+ and Glade. There are a few non-critical errors in the text (stating that a MySQL table is limited to 50 mio. records; claiming that Qt is not free, although the Qt/X11 is released under the GPL). The chapters on GTK+ also give the reader the first taste of the author's preference on using page upon page of commented source, rather than explanatory body text.
The second section is a walk-through of three Real-world implementations. The first is a relatively simple order entry application; the second a commissions calculation application and the third a fairly complex report generator. In all three examples, the focus is primarily on Glade and GTK+, and very little mention is made of MySQL.
The third section is a short discussion on using the XML files generated by Glade, which may -- in some very specific cases - allow the programmer to make changes to an application without recompiling a project. This discussion really is too short, and I wonder whether the reader might be confused more than helped by this chapter. These pages could have been of much better use if the author had spent some more time discussing security issues in MySQL and applications, something which this books sorely lacks. There is some discussion on the subject, but it's much too short and general.
One thing I really like about the examples is the "running commentary" on how to distribute programs, moving from a simple "copy the executable" over "make install" and ending up at "building an RPM".
I like examples, and a good tutorial should contain a lot of them. Some of the code examples in the book are very good -- those where a small section of a program is shown, and each important line of code is emphasized and explained. In this book, the author has chosen to give us page up and page down of program listings, which, although well commented in-line, make for extreme terse reading. More than half the book is comprised of program listings, and that's not counting the last 150+ pages making up the appendix, consisting solely of program listings. I have serious doubts that anyone will ever be reading these.
The title of the book is, unfortunately, very badly chosen. "MySQL" suggests that you can only use this book with the MySQL DBMS, even though many of the SQL examples are really quite general in scope; "Building User Interfaces" suggests that this book contains a general discussion on UI, while it is in fact very heavily centered on GTK+. The layout of the front page also suggests that the main focus on the book is MySQL, which is not true -- only about 25% of the contents are set off for discussing MySQL, the rest of the book is about Glade and GTK.
If you're coming from a Windows/MS-Access background and wish to know more about writing GUI applications for MySQL, program deployment, this book is definitely for you. If you've never worked with MySQL (or any other SQL database), you should get some more experience before getting this book.
I'm giving five stars for the contents minus one for a misleading title page.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Discussion
Review: Mathew Stucky has written an interesting book on building Graphical User Interfaces that interface to the MySQL database. As such, it is a nice follow-on to MySQL by Paul Dubois. This book seems to be primarily aimed at VB developers (or similar GUI development frameworks) who wish to build GUI applications using MySQL as the backend. While MySQL runs on a wide range of different platforms, being an open-source product, it is extremely popular on Linux. The book tackles many different user interface projects in a consistent manner, starting with a problem definition, followed by designs of the UI and database, and concluding with an analysis of the application. The main complaint I had with the book is that it really discusses only one approach to building user interfaces to MySQL, completely ignoring the web interface, which could be built with PHP, JSPs, or even applets. Thus the title is somewhat misleading. Finally, the reader does need a fairly hefty background before starting this book.
Rating:
Summary: Written for both Linux and Windows developers
Review: Matthew Stucky's MySQL: Building User Interfaces is a 656 page companion volume to Paul DuBois' MySQL, written for both Linux and Windows developers and designed to teach the reader how to implement and handle the transition issues in moving to the MySQL database by presenting valuable insight from his experience with different companies. MySQL: Building User Interfaces starts by introducing the functionality of GTK+ and how to migrate from Microsoft's Visual Basic. It then introduces MySQL as a simple, fast, reliable database for corporate applications. It then transitions into the how-to of combining GTK+ and MySQL through the coverage of the C API for MySQL because it is the "backend" to a GTK+ application. A very highly recommended instructional reference MySQL: Building User Interfaces also covers heterogeneous network and deployment issues, as well as migration from existing systems to MySQL.
Rating:
Summary: Good book; Lousy database
Review: This book will guide you very well through learning the wrong database. Yes, I've read the book (long ago). It helped me to learn MySQL. It even made me an advocate of MySQL. But I didn't know the first thing about what makes a database work. I was following the masses of new web developers, ignorantly flocking to MySQL. If you need fantastic speed, rock-solid reliability and -- more importantly -- a true understanding of how real RDBMS systems work, learn and use PostreSQL. It runs circles around MySQL! (We use it to support web services in 20 countries). PostgreSQL will look far better on your resume than will MySQL. When I see PostgreSQL listed on a candidate's resume, I know (if the candidate is truly postgres-savvy) s/he can be counted on to work with virtually any database we support.
Rating:
Summary: Good book; Lousy database
Review: This book will guide you very well through learning the wrong database. Yes, I've read the book (long ago). It helped me to learn MySQL. It even made me an advocate of MySQL. But I didn't know the first thing about what makes a database work. I was following the masses of new web developers, ignorantly flocking to MySQL. If you need fantastic speed, rock-solid reliability and -- more importantly -- a true understanding of how real RDBMS systems work, learn and use PostreSQL. It runs circles around MySQL! (We use it to support web services in 20 countries). PostgreSQL will look far better on your resume than will MySQL. When I see PostgreSQL listed on a candidate's resume, I know (if the candidate is truly postgres-savvy) s/he can be counted on to work with virtually any database we support.
Rating:
Summary: Best MySQl Developer Book I have read
Review: This is the MySQL book I wished I had three years ago! This book is targeted specifically at VB/Access/MS-SQL programmers who are considering moving to MySQL/Linux/Gtk+. This book is perfect for anyone coming from a Microsoft Database programming environment. Mr Stucky's first chapter comparison of MySQL's features AND shortcomings versus Access and MS-SQL is the best introduction and explanation of MySQL I have ever read. This book is not for "newbie" programmers. He assumes (and lets you know in the intro) that you should have a minimal understanding of both C and visual programming, the book is not a programming tutorial. It is a book that will make the job of a VB programmer learning Gtk+ much easier. The book is full of code which is excellently explained throughout. The meat of the book is a step by step explanation for best practices for building the client side interface. He deals with the building of each object in great detail, handling all the nuances for VB programmers. This is a great book for ANYONE coming from a MS background who wants to get up to speed with Gtk/MySQL programing in a hurry.
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