MySQL Fourth Edition potx

MySQL®
Fourth Edition
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MySQL®
Fourth Edition
Paul DuBois
MySQL®
Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Pearson Education, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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ISBN-13: 978-0-672-32938-8
ISBN-10: 0-672-32938-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
DuBois, Paul, 1956-
MySQL / Paul DuBois. — 4th ed.
p. cm.

Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-672-32938-8 (pbk.)
1. SQL (Computer program language) 2. MySQL (Electronic resource) 3. Database man-
agement. I. Title.
QA76.73.S67D588 2009
005.13’3—dc22
2008030855
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing August 2008
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Contents at a Glance
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
I: General MySQL Use
1 Getting Started with MySQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2 Using SQL to Manage Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
3 Data Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
4 Stored Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

5 Query Optimization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
II: Using MySQL Programming Interfaces
6 Introduction to MySQL Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
7 Writing MySQL Programs Using C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
8 Writing MySQL Programs Using Perl DBI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
9 Writing MySQL Programs Using PHP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
III: MySQL Administration
10 Introduction to MySQL Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
11 The MySQL Data Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585
12 General MySQL Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
13 Access Control and Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 699
14 Database Maintenance, Backups, and Replication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 737
IV: Appendixes
A Obtaining and Installing Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 777
B Data Type Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 797
C Operator and Function Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 813
D System, Status, and User Variable Reference. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 889
E SQL Syntax Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 937
F MySQL Program Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1037
Note: Appendixes G, H, and I are located online and are accessible either by registering this
book at informit.com/register or by visiting www.kitebird.com/mysql-book.
G C API Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1121
H Perl DBI API Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1177
I PHP API Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1207
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1225
Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Why Choose MySQL? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Already Running Another RDBMS?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Tools Provided with MySQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

What You Can Expect from This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Road Map to This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Part I: General MySQL Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Part II: Using MySQL Programming Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Part III: MySQL Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Part IV: Appendixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
How to Read This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Versions of Software Covered in This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Conventions Used in This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Additional Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
I: General MySQL Use
1 Getting Started with MySQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.1 How MySQL Can Help You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.2 A Sample Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.2.1 The U.S. Historical League . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.2.2 The Grade-Keeping Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.2.3 How the Sample Database Applies to You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.3 Basic Database Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.3.1 Structural Terminology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.3.2 Query Language Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
1.3.3 MySQL Architectural Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.4 A MySQL Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.4.1 Obtaining the Sample Database Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
1.4.2 Preliminary Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1.4.3 Establishing and Terminating Connections to the MySQL Server . . . . 28
1.4.4 Executing SQL Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.4.5 Creating a Database. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
1.4.6 Creating Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
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1.4.7 Adding New Rows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
1.4.8 Resetting the
sampdb Database to a Known State . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
1.4.9 Retrieving Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
1.4.10 Deleting or Updating Existing Rows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
1.5 Tips for Interacting with
mysql . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
1.5.1 Simplifying the Connection Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
1.5.2 Issuing Statements with Less Typing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
1.6 Where to Now? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
2 Using SQL to Manage Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
2.1 The Server SQL Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
2.2 MySQL Identifier Syntax and Naming Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
2.3 Case Sensitivity in SQL Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
2.4 Character Set Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
2.4.1 Specifying Character Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
2.4.2 Determining Character Set Availability and Current Settings. . . . . . . 109
2.4.3 Unicode Support. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
2.5 Selecting, Creating, Dropping, and Altering Databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
2.5.1 Selecting Databases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
2.5.2 Creating Databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
2.5.3 Dropping Databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
2.5.4 Altering Databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
2.6 Creating, Dropping, Indexing, and Altering Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
2.6.1 Storage Engine Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
2.6.2 Creating Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
2.6.3 Dropping Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
2.6.4 Indexing Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
2.6.5 Altering Table Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
2.7 Obtaining Database Metadata. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

2.7.1 Obtaining Metadata with
SHOW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
2.7.2 Obtaining Metadata with
INFORMATION_SCHEMA . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
2.7.3 Obtaining Metadata from the Command Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
2.8 Performing Multiple-Table Retrievals with Joins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
2.8.1 The Inner Join . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
2.8.2 Qualifying References to Columns from Joined Tables . . . . . . . . . . . 153
2.8.3 Left and Right (Outer) Joins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
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2.9 Performing Multiple-Table Retrievals with Subqueries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
2.9.1 Subqueries with Relative Comparison Operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
2.9.2
IN and NOT IN Subqueries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
2.9.3
ALL, ANY, and SOME Subqueries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
2.9.4
EXISTS and NOT EXISTS Subqueries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
2.9.5 Correlated Subqueries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
2.9.6 Subqueries in the
FROM Clause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
2.9.7 Rewriting Subqueries as Joins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
2.10 Performing Multiple-Table Retrievals with
UNION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
2.11 Using Views. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
2.12 Multiple-Table Deletes and Updates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
2.13 Performing Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
2.13.1 Using Transactions to Ensure Safe Statement Execution . . . . . . . . 176
2.13.2 Using Transaction Savepoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

2.13.3 Transaction Isolation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
2.13.4 Non-Transactional Approaches to Transactional Problems . . . . . . . 182
2.14 Foreign Keys and Referential Integrity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
2.14.1 Creating and Using Foreign Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
2.14.2 Living Without Foreign Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
2.15 Using
FULLTEXT Searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
2.15.1 Natural Language
FULLTEXT Searches. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
2.15.2 Boolean Mode
FULLTEXT Searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
2.15.3 Query Expansion
FULLTEXT Searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
2.15.4 Configuring the
FULLTEXT Search Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
3 Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
3.1 Data Value Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
3.1.1 Numeric Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
3.1.2 String Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
3.1.3 Date and Time (Temporal) Values. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
3.1.4 Spatial Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
3.1.5 Boolean Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
3.1.6 The
NULL Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
3.2 MySQL Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
3.2.1 Overview of Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
3.2.2 Specifying Column Types in Table Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
3.2.3 Specifying Column Default Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
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3.2.4 Numeric Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
3.2.5 String Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
3.2.6 Date and Time Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
3.2.7 Spatial Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
3.3 How MySQL Handles Invalid Data Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
3.4 Working with Sequences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
3.4.1 General
AUTO_INCREMENT Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
3.4.2 Storage Engine-Specific
AUTO_INCREMENT Properties . . . . . . . . . 256
3.4.3 Issues to Consider with
AUTO_INCREMENT Columns . . . . . . . . . . 259
3.4.4 Tips for Working with
AUTO_INCREMENT Columns . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
3.4.5 Generating Sequences Without
AUTO_INCREMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
3.5 Expression Evaluation and Type Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
3.5.1 Writing Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
3.5.2 Type Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
3.6 Choosing Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
3.6.1 What Kind of Values Will the Column Hold? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
3.6.2 Do Your Values Lie Within Some Particular Range? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
3.6.3 Inter-Relatedness of Data Type Choice Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
4 Stored Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
4.1 Compound Statements and Statement Delimiters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
4.2 Stored Functions and Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
4.2.1 Privileges for Stored Functions and Procedures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
4.2.2 Stored Procedure Parameter Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
4.3 Triggers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
4.4 Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298

4.5 Security for Stored Programs and Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
5 Query Optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
5.1 Using Indexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
5.1.1 Benefits of Indexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
5.1.2 Costs of Indexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
5.1.3 Choosing Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
5.2 The MySQL Query Optimizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
5.2.1 How the Optimizer Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
5.2.2 Using
EXPLAIN to Check Optimizer Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
5.3 Choosing Data Types for Efficient Queries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
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5.4 Loading Data Efficiently . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
5.5 Scheduling and Locking Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
5.5.1 Changing Statement Scheduling Priorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
5.5.2 Using Delayed Inserts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
5.5.3 Using Concurrent Inserts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
5.5.4 Locking Levels and Concurrency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
5.6 Administrative-Level Optimizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
5.6.1 Using MyISAM Key Caches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
5.6.2 Using the Query Cache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
5.6.3 Hardware Optimizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
II: Using MySQL Programming Interfaces
6 Introduction to MySQL Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
6.1 Why Write Your Own MySQL Programs? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
6.2 APIs Available for MySQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
6.2.1 The C API. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
6.2.2 The Perl DBI API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
6.2.3 The PHP API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349

6.3 Choosing an API. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
6.3.1 Execution Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
6.3.2 Performance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
6.3.3 Development Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
6.3.4 Portability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
7 Writing MySQL Programs Using C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
7.1 Compiling and Linking Client Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
7.2 Connecting to the Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
7.3 Handling Errors and Processing Command Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
7.3.1 Checking for Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
7.3.2 Getting Connection Parameters at Runtime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
7.3.3 Incorporating Option-Processing into a MySQL Client Program . . . . . 384
7.4 Processing SQL Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
7.4.1 Handling Statements That Modify Rows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
7.4.2 Handling Statements That Return a Result Set. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
7.4.3 A General-Purpose Statement Handler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
7.4.4 Alternative Approaches to Statement Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396
7.4.5
mysql_store_result() Versus mysql_use_result(). . . . 398
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7.4.6 Using Result Set Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
7.4.7 Encoding Special Characters and Binary Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
7.5 An Interactive Statement-Execution Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
7.6 Writing Clients That Include SSL Support. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
7.7 Using the Embedded Server Library. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
7.7.1 Writing an Embedded Server Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
7.7.2 Producing the Application Executable Binary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
7.8 Using Multiple-Statement Execution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
7.9 Using Server-Side Prepared Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422

8 Writing MySQL Programs Using Perl DBI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
8.1 Perl Script Characteristics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
8.2 Perl DBI Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
8.2.1 DBI Data Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
8.2.2 A Simple DBI Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
8.2.3 Handling Errors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
8.2.4 Handling Statements That Modify Rows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
8.2.5 Handling Statements That Return a Result Set. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
8.2.6 Quoting Special Characters in Statement Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
8.2.7 Placeholders and Prepared Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
8.2.8 Binding Query Results to Script Variables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
8.2.9 Specifying Connection Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
8.2.10 Debugging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
8.2.11 Using Result Set Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
8.2.12 Performing Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
8.3 Putting DBI to Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
8.3.1 Generating the Historical League Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
8.3.2 Sending Membership Renewal Notices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
8.3.3 Historical League Member Entry Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
8.3.4 Finding Historical League Members with Common Interests . . . . . . 496
8.3.5 Putting the Historical League Directory Online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
8.4 Using DBI in Web Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
8.4.1 Setting Up Apache for CGI Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502
8.4.2 A Brief CGI.pm Primer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
8.4.3 Connecting to the MySQL Server from Web Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510
8.4.4 A Web-Based Database Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
8.4.5 A Grade-Keeping Project Score Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517
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8.4.6 Historical League Common-Interest Searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521

9 Writing MySQL Programs Using PHP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
9.1 PHP Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529
9.1.1 A Simple PHP Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
9.1.2 Using PHP Library Files for Code Encapsulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534
9.1.3 A Simple Data-Retrieval Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
9.1.4 Processing Statement Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543
9.1.5 Testing for
NULL Values in Query Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
9.1.6 Using Prepared Statements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
9.1.7 Using Placeholders to Handle Data Quoting Issues. . . . . . . . . . . . . 548
9.1.8 Handling Errors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550
9.2 Putting PHP to Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552
9.2.1 An Online Score-Entry Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552
9.2.2 Creating an Interactive Online Quiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 565
9.2.3 Historical League Online Member Entry Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570
III: MySQL Administration
10 Introduction to MySQL Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
10.1 MySQL Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 580
10.2 General MySQL Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 581
10.3 Access Control and Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 582
10.4 Database Maintenance, Backups, and Replication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 582
11 The MySQL Data Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585
11.1 Location of the Data Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
11.2 Structure of the Data Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587
11.2.1 How the MySQL Server Provides Access to Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588
11.2.2 Representation of Databases in the Filesystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590
11.2.3 Representation of Tables in the Filesystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590
11.2.4 Representation of Views and Triggers in the Filesystem . . . . . . . . 592
11.2.5 How SQL Statements Map onto Table File Operations . . . . . . . . . . 592
11.2.6 Operating System Constraints on Database Object Names . . . . . . 593

11.2.7 Factors That Affect Maximum Table Size. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596
11.2.8 Implications of Data Directory Structure for System Performance. . 597
11.2.9 MySQL Status and Log Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 599
11.3 Relocating Data Directory Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
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11.3.1 Relocation Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
11.3.2 Relocation Precautions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
11.3.3 Assessing the Effect of Relocation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
11.3.4 Relocating the Entire Data Directory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
11.3.5 Relocating Individual Databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
11.3.6 Relocating Individual Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 606
11.3.7 Relocating the InnoDB Shared Tablespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 606
11.3.8 Relocating Status and Log Files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
12 General MySQL Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
12.1 Securing a New MySQL Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610
12.1.1 Establishing Passwords for the Initial MySQL Accounts . . . . . . . . . 610
12.1.2 Setting Up Passwords for a Second Server. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615
12.2 Arranging for MySQL Server Startup and Shutdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 616
12.2.1 Running the MySQL Server On Unix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 616
12.2.2 Running the MySQL Server On Windows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621
12.2.3 Specifying Server Startup Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 624
12.2.4 Stopping the Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 626
12.2.5 Regaining Control of the Server When You Cannot Connect to It . . 626
12.3 Controlling How the Server Listens for Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 629
12.4 Managing MySQL User Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 630
12.4.1 High-Level MySQL Account Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 631
12.4.2 Granting Privileges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 634
12.4.3 Displaying Account Privileges. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643
12.4.4 Revoking Privileges and Removing Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643

12.4.5 Changing Passwords or Resetting Lost Passwords . . . . . . . . . . . . 644
12.5 Maintaining Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645
12.5.1 The Error Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 648
12.5.2 The General Query Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 649
12.5.3 The Slow-Query Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 649
12.5.4 The Binary Log and the Binary Log Index File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 650
12.5.5 The Relay Log and the Relay Log Index File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652
12.5.6 Using Log Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652
12.5.7 Log Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 653
12.6 Tuning the Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 660
12.6.1 Checking and Setting System Variable Values. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 661
12.6.2 General-Purpose System Variables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 665
12.6.3 Checking Status Variable Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 667
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12.7 Storage Engine Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669
12.7.1 Selecting Which Storage Engines a Server Supports . . . . . . . . . . . 669
12.7.2 Configuring the MyISAM Storage Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 671
12.7.3 Configuring the InnoDB Storage Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 674
12.7.4 Configuring the Falcon Storage Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 680
12.8 Enabling or Disabling
LOCAL Capability for LOAD DATA . . . . . . . . . . . 681
12.9 Internationalization and Localization Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 681
12.9.1 Configuring Time Zone Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 682
12.9.2 Selecting the Language for Error Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 684
12.9.3 Configuring Character Set Support. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 684
12.10 Running Multiple Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 685
12.10.1 General Multiple Server Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 686
12.10.2 Configuring and Compiling Different Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 688
12.10.3 Strategies for Specifying Startup Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 690

12.10.4 Using
mysqld_multi for Server Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . 691
12.10.5 Running Multiple Servers on Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 693
12.11 Updating MySQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 695
13 Access Control and Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 699
13.1 Internal Security: Preventing Unauthorized Filesystem Access . . . . . . . . 700
13.1.1 How to Steal Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 701
13.1.2 Securing Your MySQL Installation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 702
13.2 External Security: Preventing Unauthorized Network Access . . . . . . . . . 709
13.2.1 Structure and Contents of the MySQL Grant Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . 709
13.2.2 How the Server Controls Client Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 719
13.2.3 A Privilege Puzzle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 724
13.2.4 Grant Table Risks to Avoid. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 728
13.3 Setting Up Secure Connections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 731
14 Database Maintenance, Backups, and Replication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 737
14.1 Principles of Preventive Maintenance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 737
14.2 Performing Database Maintenance with the Server Running . . . . . . . . . 739
14.2.1 Locking Individual Tables for Read-Only or Read/Write Access . . . . 740
14.2.2 Locking All Databases for Read-Only Access. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 743
14.3 General Preventative Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 743
14.3.1 Using the Server’s Auto-Recovery Capabilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 744
14.3.2 Scheduling Preventive Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 745
14.4 Making Database Backups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 746
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14.4.1 Making Text Backups with
mysqldump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 748
14.4.2 Making Binary Database Backups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 751
14.4.3 Backing Up InnoDB or Falcon Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 754
14.5 Copying Databases to Another Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 755

14.5.1 Copying Databases Using a Backup File. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 755
14.5.2 Copying Databases from One Server to Another . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 756
14.6 Checking and Repairing Database Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 757
14.6.1 Using the Server to Check and Repair Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 758
14.6.2 Using
mysqlcheck to Check and Repair Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . 759
14.6.3 Using
myisamchk to Check and Repair Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 760
14.7 Using Backups for Data Recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 763
14.7.1 Recovering Entire Databases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 764
14.7.2 Recovering Individual Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 764
14.7.3 Re-Executing Statements in Binary Log Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 765
14.7.4 Coping with InnoDB Auto-Recovery Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 767
14.8 Setting Up Replication Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 768
14.8.1 How Replication Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 769
14.8.2 Establishing a Master-Slave Replication Relationship . . . . . . . . . . 770
14.8.3 Binary Logging Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 773
14.8.4 Using a Replication Slave for Making Backups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774
IV: Appendixes
A Obtaining and Installing Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 777
A.1 Obtaining the sampdb Sample Database Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 777
A.2 Obtaining MySQL and Related Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 778
A.3 Choosing a Version of MySQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 780
A.4 Installing MySQL on Unix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 780
A.4.1 Creating a Login Account for the MySQL User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 782
A.4.2 Obtaining and Installing a MySQL Distribution on Unix. . . . . . . . . . . 782
A.4.3 Post-Installation Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 786
A.4.4 Installing Perl DBI Support on Unix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 789
A.4.5 Installing Apache and PHP on Unix. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 790
A.5 Installing MySQL on Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 792

A.5.1 Installing Perl DBI Support on Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 796
A.5.2 Installing Apache and PHP on Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 796
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B Data Type Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 797
B.1 Numeric Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 799
B.1.1 Integer Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 799
B.1.2 Fixed-Point Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801
B.1.3 Floating-Point Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801
B.1.4
BIT Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 803
B.2 String Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 803
B.2.1 Binary String Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 805
B.2.2 Non-Binary String Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 807
B.2.3
ENUM and SET Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 809
B.3 Date and Time Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 809
B.4 Spatial Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 811
C Operator and Function Reference. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 813
C.1 Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 814
C.1.1 Operator Precedence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 814
C.1.2 Grouping Operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 815
C.1.3 Arithmetic Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 816
C.1.4 Comparison Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 817
C.1.5 Bit Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 823
C.1.6 Logical Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 824
C.1.7 Cast Operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 825
C.1.8 Pattern-Matching Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 826
C.2 Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 830
C.2.1 Comparison Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 831

C.2.2 Cast Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 833
C.2.3 Numeric Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 834
C.2.4 String Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 840
C.2.5 Date and Time Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 852
C.2.6 Summary Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 868
C.2.7 Security and Compression Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 871
C.2.8 Advisory Locking Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 875
C.2.9 Spatial Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 877
C.2.10 XML Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 883
C.2.11 Miscellaneous Functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 883
xvii
Contents
D System, Status, and User Variable Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 889
D.1 System Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 889
D.2 Session-Only System Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 921
D.3 Status Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 924
D.3.1 InnoDB Status Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 930
D.3.2 Query Cache Status Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 933
D.3.3 SSL Status Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 934
D.4 User-Defined Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 935
E SQL Syntax Reference. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 937
E.1 SQL Statement Syntax (Non-Compound Statements) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 938
E.2 Compound Statement Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1028
E.2.1 Control Structure Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1029
E.2.2 Declaration Statements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1031
E.2.3 Cursor Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1033
E.3 Comment Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1033
F MySQL Program Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1037
F.1 Displaying a Program’s Help Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1038
F.2 Specifying Program Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1039

F.2.1 Standard MySQL Program Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1041
F.2.2 Option Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1045
F.2.3 Environment Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1049
F.3
myisamchk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1051
F.3.1 Standard Options Supported by
myisamchk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1052
F.3.2 Options Specific to
myisamchk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1053
F.3.3 Variables for
myisamchk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1056
F.4
myisampack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1058
F.4.1 Standard Options Supported by
myisampack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1058
F.4.2 Options Specific to
myisampack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1058
F.5
mysql. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1059
F.5.1 Standard Options Supported by
mysql . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1060
F.5.2 Options Specific to
mysql . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1061
F.5.3 Variables for
mysql . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1065
F.5.4
mysql Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1066
F.5.5
mysql Prompt Definition Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1068
xviii

Contents
F.6
mysql.server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1070
F.6.1 Options Supported by
mysql.server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1070
F.7
mysql_config . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1071
F.7.1 Options Specific to
mysql_config . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1071
F.8
mysql_install_db . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1071
F.8.1 Standard Options Supported by
mysql_install_db . . . . . . . . . 1072
F.8.2 Options Specific to
mysql_install_db . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1072
F.9
mysqladmin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1072
F.9.1 Standard Options Supported by
mysqladmin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1073
F.9.2 Options Specific to
mysqladmin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1073
F.9.3 Variables for
mysqladmin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1074
F.9.4
mysqladmin Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1074
F.10
mysqlbinlog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1076
F.10.1 Standard Options Supported by
mysqlbinlog . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1076
F.10.2 Options Specific to

mysqlbinlog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1077
F.10.3 Variables for
mysqlbinlog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1079
F.11
mysqlcheck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1079
F.11.1 Standard Options Supported by
mysqlcheck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1079
F.11.2 Options Specific to
mysqlcheck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1080
F.12
mysqld. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1083
F.12.1 Standard Options Supported by
mysqld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1083
F.12.2 Options Specific to
mysqld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1084
F.12.3 Variables for
mysqld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1100
F.13
mysqld_multi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1101
F.13.1 Standard Options Supported by
mysqld_multi . . . . . . . . . . . . 1101
F.13.2 Options Specific to
mysqld_multi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1101
F.14
mysqld_safe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1102
F.14.1 Standard Options Supported by
mysqld_safe . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1102
F.14.2 Options Specific to
mysqld_safe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1102
F.15

mysqldump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1104
F.15.1 Standard Options Supported by
mysqldump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1105
F.15.2 Options Specific to
mysqldump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1105
F.15.3 Data Format Options for
mysqldump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1112
F.15.4 Variables for
mysqldump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1112
F.16
mysqlhotcopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1113
F.16.1 Standard Options Supported by
mysqlhotcopy . . . . . . . . . . . . 1114
F.16.2 Options Specific to
mysqlhotcopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1114
xix
Contents
F.17
mysqlimport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1116
F.17.1 Standard Options Supported by
mysqlimport . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1117
F.17.2 Options Specific to
mysqlimport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1117
F.17.3 Data Format Options for
mysqlimport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1118
F.18
mysqlshow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1119
F.18.1 Standard Options Supported by
mysqlshow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1119
F.18.2 Options Specific to

mysqlshow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1119
F.19
perror. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1120
F.19.1 Standard Options Supported by
perror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1120
Note: Appendixes G, H, and I are located online and are accessible either by registering this
book at informit.com/register or by visiting www.kitebird.com/mysql-book.
G C API Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1121
G.1 Compiling and Linking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1122
G.2 C API Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1123
G.2.1 Scalar Data Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1123
G.2.2 Non-Scalar Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1124
G.2.3 Accessor Macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1135
G.3 C API Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1136
G.3.1 Client Library Initialization and Termination Routines. . . . . . . . . . . 1136
G.3.2 Connection Management Routines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1137
G.3.3 Error-Reporting Routines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1149
G.3.4 Statement Construction and Execution Routines . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1150
G.3.5 Result Set Processing Routines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1152
G.3.6 Information Routines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1161
G.3.7 Transaction Control Routines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1164
G.3.8 Multiple Result Set Routines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1164
G.3.9 Prepared Statement Routines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1165
G.3.10 Administrative Routines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1173
G.3.11 Threaded Client Routines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1175
G.3.12 Debugging Routines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1175
H Perl DBI API Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1177
H.1 Writing Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1178
H.2 DBI Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1178
H.2.1 DBI Class Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1180

H.2.2 Database-Handle Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1185
xx
Contents
H.2.3 Statement-Handle Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1191
H.2.4 General Handle Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1195
H.2.5 MySQL-Specific Administrative Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1196
H.3 DBI Utility Functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1197
H.4 DBI Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1198
H.4.1 Database-Handle Attributes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1198
H.4.2 General Handle Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1199
H.4.3 MySQL-Specific Database-Handle Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1200
H.4.4 Statement-Handle Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1201
H.4.5 MySQL-Specific Statement-Handle Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1203
H.4.6 Dynamic Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1205
H.5 DBI Environment Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1205
I PHP API Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1207
I.1 Writing PHP Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1207
I.2
PDO Classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1208
I.3
PDO Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1208
I.3.1
PDO Class Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1209
I.3.2
PDOStatement Object Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1215
I.3.3
PDOException Object Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1222
I.3.4
PDO Constants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1223
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1225

About the Author
Paul DuBois is a writer, database administrator, and leader in the open source and
MySQL communities. He has contributed to the online documentation for MySQL and
is the author of MySQL and Perl for the Web (New Riders), MySQL Cookbook, Using csh
and tcsh, and Software Portability with imake (O’Reilly). He is currently a technical writer
with the MySQL documentation team at Sun Microsystems.
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments are presented here by edition.
Fourth Edition
My technical reviewers, Stephen Frein and Tim Boronczyk, identified many points that
needed correction or clarification. Ulf Wendel and Johannes Schlüter made comments
and corrections on the PHP material. My thanks to each of them.
The staff at Pearson responsible for this edition were Mark Taber, Acquisitions Editor;
Michael Thurston, Development Editor; Jovana San Nicolas-Shirley, Project Editor; Jake
McFarland, Compositor; Cheryl Lenser, Indexer; and Gary Adair, Cover Designer.
To my wife Karen, my continued thanks and gratitude for her encouragement and
support throughout this effort.
Third Edition
The third edition enjoyed careful technical review by Zak Greant and Chris Newman.
Their efforts improved the manuscript at many points. Monty and the developers at
MySQL AB also provided insight in response to my questions.
The people at Pearson responsible for this edition were Shelley Johnston,Acquisitions
Editor; Damon Jordan, Development Editor; and Andy Beaster, Project Editor.
I am happy to recognize that my wife Karen again deserves special credit for her sup-
port during yet more revision and rewriting.
Second Edition
For the second edition, the technical reviewers once again played a crucial role in find-
ing errors and making corrections and clarifications. Hang Lau and Shane Kirk served as
reviewers. I’d also like to thank Monty Widenius, Alexander Barkov, Jani Tolonen, and
the other MySQL developers for patiently enduring my many questions and supplying

answers that made their way into these pages.
The New Riders staff that brought this edition to life were Stephanie Wall, Associate
Publisher; Chris Zahn, Development Editor; Lori Lyons, Senior Project Editor; Pat
Kinyon, Copy Editor; Cheryl Lenser, Indexer; and Stacey Richwine-DeRome,
Compositor.
And, as always, my wife Karen provided the behind-the-scenes support that readers
do not see, but without which this book would be much poorer.
First Edition
This book benefited greatly from the comments, corrections, and criticisms provided by
the technical reviewers: David Axmark,Vijay Chaugule, Chad Cunningham, Bill Gerrard,
Jijo George John, Fred Read, Egon Schmid, and Jani Tolonen. Special thanks goes to
Michael “Monty”Widenius, the principal MySQL developer, who not only reviewed the
manuscript, but also fielded hundreds of questions that I sent his way during the course
of writing the book. Naturally, any errors that remain are my own. I’d also like to thank
Tomas Karlsson, Colin McKinnon, Sasha Pachev, Eric Savage, Derick H. Siddoway, and
Bob Worthy, who reviewed the initial proposal and helped shape the book into its pres-
ent form.
The staff at New Riders are responsible first for conceiving this book and then for
turning my scribblings into the finished work you hold in your hands. Laurie Petrycki
acted as Executive Editor. Katie Purdum, Acquisitions Editor, helped me get under way
and took the heat when I missed deadlines. Leah Williams did double duty not only as
Development Editor but as Copy Editor; she put in many, many late hours, especially in
the final stages of the project. Cheryl Lenser and Tim Wright produced the index. John
Rahm served as Project Editor. Debra Neel proofread the manuscript. Gina Rexrode and
Wil Cruz, Compositors, laid out the book in the form you see now. My thanks to each
of them.
Most of all, I want to express my appreciation to my wife, Karen, for putting up with
another book, and for her understanding and patience as I disappeared, sometimes for
days on end, into “the writing zone.” Her support made the task easier on many
occasions, and I am pleased to acknowledge her contribution; she helped me write

every page.
We Want to Hear from You!
As the reader of this book, you are our most important critic and commentator.We value
your opinion and want to know what we’re doing right, what we could do better, what
areas you’d like to see us publish in, and any other words of wisdom you’re willing to
pass our way.
You can email or write me directly to let me know what you did or didn’t like about
this book—as well as what we can do to make our books stronger.
Please note that I cannot help you with technical problems related to the topic of this book, and
that due to the high volume of mail I receive, I might not be able to reply to every message.
When you write, please be sure to include this book’s title and author as well as your
name and phone or email address. I will carefully review your comments and share them
with the author and editors who worked on the book.
Email:
Mail: Mark Taber
Associate Publisher
Pearson Education
800 East 96th Street
Indianapolis, IN 46240 USA
Reader Services
Visit our website and register this book at informit.com/register for convenient access to
any updates, downloads, or errata that might be available for this book.
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