I emailed Sams asking them for a copy of Zend Studio Handbook which is unfortunately not yet available; they were however kind enough to send me a free copy of the MySQL Phrasebook, for review.


It's a very light book, slightly taller than your average paper back, weighing in at only 181 pages. In those pages the authors have managed to cram in lots of different types of information: From a basic introduction to the relational database model, to basic administration information, to query design and code examples in C, PHP & Perl. That's a lot of information for such a tiny book, so necessarily the coverage is brief. Fortunately the authors managed to hone in on the information from each section that would be most useful to the reader, and concentrate on that.


The "phrases" the book introduces deal are basically short little answers to questions that come up frequently when working with MySQL (I might say that a Phrasebook Sam's pocketbook version of O'Reilly's cookbooks). Starting off with basic things like select queries, and moving up to cross table queries (incidentally I finally understand the difference between an inner and outer join). It also goes into performance tips, server administration, and backups.


If you're already well versed in the world of MySQL, this isn't the book for you. However, if you're anything like me, someone who uses MySQL a lot for a few basic things but doesn't really know much beyond that, this book will be a good addition to your reference library. If you're just getting started with MySQL this book isn't going to teach you everything you know, but will help answer some questions for you along the way.


Overall I'd recommend this book to most of my friends.


Details:

Cost: $14.99 (list price)

Type: Paperback

Length: 181 pages, lots of "phrases"

Buy from Amazon: MySQL Phrasebook ($9.74)