Book Image

The MySQL Workshop

By : Thomas Pettit, Scott Cosentino
5 (1)
Book Image

The MySQL Workshop

5 (1)
By: Thomas Pettit, Scott Cosentino

Overview of this book

Do you want to learn how to create and maintain databases effectively? Are you looking for simple answers to basic MySQL questions as well as straightforward examples that you can use at work? If so, this workshop is the right choice for you. Designed to build your confidence through hands-on practice, this book uses a simple approach that focuses on the practical, so you can get straight down to business without having to wade through pages and pages of dull, dry theory. As you work through bite-sized exercises and activities, you'll learn how to use different MySQL tools to create a database and manage the data within it. You'll see how to transfer data between a MySQL database and other sources, and use real-world datasets to gain valuable experience of manipulating and gaining insights from data. As you progress, you'll discover how to protect your database by managing user permissions and performing logical backups and restores. If you've already tried to teach yourself SQL, but haven't been able to make the leap from understanding simple queries to working on live projects with a real database management system, The MySQL Workshop will get you on the right track. By the end of this MySQL book, you'll have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to advance your career and tackle your own ambitious projects with MySQL.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Section 1: Creating Your Database
6
Section 2: Managing Your Database
11
Section 3: Querying Your Database
16
Section 4: Protecting Your Database

Querying tables in MySQL

To get data out of MySQL, we use a SELECT query. A basic SELECT query has the following format:

SELECT <items> FROM <table>

Here, <items> can be many different kinds of things. It can be a wildcard (*) character, which returns all columns from a table, a list of columns, or even something that's not in the table at all but should still be in resultset – for example, a constant such as production or number. The FROM <table> part is optional, but it is there in most cases.

The SQL language is a declarative language, which means that the focus is more on the results that are obtained rather than how they are obtained. This is why we describe in a SELECT statement what the returned data should look like (for example, what fields it should have). We don't instruct the database to open the data file and navigate through the data structures. Based on the instructions we give for what the results should look like,...