This volume offers a problem-and-solution format that offers practical examples for everyday programming dilemmas. For every problem addressed in the book, there's a worked-out solution or "recipe" - short, focused pieces of code that you can insert directly into your applications. But MySQL Cookbook is more than a collection of cut-and-paste code. You also get explanations of how and why thecode works, so you can learn to adapt the techniques to similar situations. The book covers a lot of ground. Solutions for typical MySQL dilemmas range from simple ways to find all records that contain a given string, to more difficult problems, such as finding matching/nonmatching records in two tables. Whether you use MySQL on Unix, Linux, Windows or the Mac OSX platform, the book will show you how to: import data from external sources; export data for use by external programs; access MySQL from your Web server; use scripts with MySQL to read queries from a file; access MySQL from within client programs that use Perl, PHP, Java, Python and other languages; construct queries that solve commonly-occurring questions; and interact with the server. This learn-as-you-go resource should help users of all levels exploit MySQL more fully. MySQL Cookbook supplies you with an armory of ready-made techniques for specific problems so that, even if you're an experienced MySQL user, you don't have to write everything from scratch.