Along with MySQL's popularity has come a flood of questions about solving specific problems, and that's where this Cookbook is essential. Designed as a handy resource when you need quick solutions or techniques, the book offers dozens of short, focused pieces of code and hundreds of worked-out examples for programmers of all levels who don't have the time (or expertise) to solve MySQL problems from scratch.The new edition covers MySQL 5.0 and its powerful new features, as well as the older but still widespread MySQL 4.1. One major emphasis of this book is how to use SQL to formulate queries for particular kinds of questions, using the mysql client program included in MySQL distributions. The other major emphasis is how to write programs that interact with the MySQL server through an API. You'll find plenty of examples using several language APIs in multiple scenarios and situations, including the use of Ruby to retrieve and format data. There are also many new examples for using Perl, PHP, Python, and Java as well.Other recipes in the book teach you to:Access data from multiple tables at the same timeUse SQL to select, sort, and summarize rowsFind matches or mismatches between rows in two tablesDetermine intervals between dates or times, including age calculationsStore images into MySQL and retrieve them for display in web pagesGet LOAD DATA to read your data files properly or find which values in the file are invalidUse strict mode to prevent entry of bad data into your databaseCopy a table or a database to another serverGenerate sequence numbers to use as unique row identifiersCreate database events that execute according to a scheduleAnd a lot moreMySQL Cookbook doesn't attempt to develop full-fledged, complex applications. Instead, it's intended to assist you in developing applications yourself by helping you get past problems that have you stumped. Read Less