I first looked at using MySql in a web application back around 2001 or 2. Using it would have required a port of the SQL statements. And I decided not to use it. The application I was porting had lots of statements that used SubQueries, and MySql didn't support these. Yes, I could have re-written all the statements using joins and other methods, but what a lot of work.
As a result, when I was first flipping through this book I found a section - Subquery Syntax. In that section, the first example showed a nested SELECT statement that had four cascaded subqueries. So I sat down in the bookstore and started reading this section. Subqueries took a dozen pages to describe, and included enough information that I found myself learning a lot about subqueries that I didn't know. (I'd point these things out, but then you'd just think I was pretty dumb.)
Then I looked for a few other things that I've had trouble finding with other DB books: Reserved Words (go try to find the reserved words in Access for instance) they are the last couple of pages in Chapter 2. Replication - it's there. Everything I looked for was there.
Let's net this out. This book is $40 (that's list price, but you know better than that). The software is ZIP - just go to www.mysql.com, click on developer and download the version you want (Linux in a bunch of versions, Windows, and several versions of Unix). The price is still ZIP. You want to upgrade to the next version, yup, cost is ZIP. Less than $40 is your total investment.
