What you need for this book

This book was written using MySQL versions 5.0 and 5.1. Most recipes will work equally well on either of these versions. Older versions might work as well, but have not been tested. You can download both versions of the MySQL server from http://dev.mysql.com.You will find references to programs and tools not included in the MySQL server distribution. These can be downloaded from their respective websites, named in the recipes. The “MySQL GUI Tools”—MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser unfortunately have been declared End Of Life shortly before this book was finished. Currently, there is no functionally equivalent successor to these tools. “MySQL Workbench” is the new combined tool recommended on the MySQL website, but it does not offer all features required to apply many of the recipes in this book. We recommend that you download MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser from the MySQL website’s archive area where they are still available. You will find them by just using the links printed in this book.