Rating: 5 / 5

This book works easily and appropriately at your deskside. I found the book to be a very simple, easy-to-navigate reference text that presents the most important aspects of MySQL in the quickest, most logical manner.

It is very easy to thumb through with every possible random page landing at a topic of interest. In a way, it was like working with a familiar dictionary, you know the kind, where you just kind of naturally crack it open near the word you're accessing and flip a couple of pages either direction to arrive at the exact reference location.

In that vein, I'd perhaps recommend that the margins contain "bread crumbs" telling us where we are in the book, but it isn't necessary since thicker sections often obviate themselves with just another page turn. Each page does have the chapter title in the margin, so my point is really one of nit-pickieness rather than a true critique.

To its credit, the layout of the book presents the content in a manner that follows the O'Reilly "risen bar" standard. It is easy to scan through the entire reference flipping pages as quickly as possible so that you are able to arrive at your sought information within as much as a second or two. The bold text draws your eye to the page and the size of the page allows one to capture everything in a single glance.

In my usage of the book, I found it very accurate and useful. I am a regular MySQL user and the formatting is very familiar to me. I highly recommend this book. If you are already familiar with SQL and the basics of database schema design, this is the perfect reference. I found it amazingly faster than loading the MySQL PDF manual and searching through potentially dozens of hits for the keywords sought. Even at the full cover price, this book is a value-added service at my side.

The sections on operators, functions, stored procedures and triggers make this book an invaluable tool for the DBA or programmer who knows the material, but fails to remember every single aspect about the syntax AND who is tired of seeing that familiar:

"You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near…"

The text also finds welcomed complement from the numerous examples of using commands and SQL keywords. They are invaluable for immediately deciphering the sometimes too-numerous options of a command.

I don't know that the book has taught me anything new at this point, but it certainly makes finding the details of what I already know much easier. Because of its brevity and its ease-of-use, it has made me want to play around with some of the various features of MySQL that I do not regularly use. That alone is going to teach me something new sooner or later!

If your budget is constrained to a single reference item on MySQL, you can't go wrong with this very portable pocket reference.

The back cover says: "When you reach a sticking point, but have to get to a solution quickly, MySQL Pocket Reference is the book you need."

I agree completely.
Rating: 5 / 5