Welcome. This MySQL tutorial is a guide for new MySQL users, providing a reference of very basic, step by step, instructions on how to get started. This MySQL help page also gives more advanced users assistance in upgrading and running multiple versions of MySQL on a computer at the same time.

MySQL is an SQL based relational database management system (DBMS) that runs under a broad array of operating systems. MySQL is frequently used by PHP and Perl scripts. The SQL commands discussed in this tutorial apply to MySQL operating under all operating systems. Only the installation instructions are Windows specific. The focus is on Windows XP Professional and Windows 2000 Professional machines

To connect to the server, you will usually need to provide a MySQL user name when you invoke mysql and, most likely, a password. If the server runs on a machine other than the one where you log in, you will also need to specify a host name. Contact your administrator to find out what connection parameters you should use to connect (that is, what host, user name, and password to use). Once you know the proper parameters, you should be able to connect like this:

Before you actually start building your database scripts, you must have a database to place information into and read it from. In this section I will show you how to create a database in MySQL and prepare it for the data. I will also begin to show you how to create the contacts management database.

MySQL databases have a standard setup. They are made up of a database, in which is contained tables. Each of these tables is quite separate and can have different fields etc. even though it is part of one database. Each table contains records which are made up of fields.

MySQL is available for Windows, Linux and other Unix variants. The Windows version is a shareware, which must registered after evaluation. I learnt SQL using this version. Later I shifted completely to Linux.... the Linux version is 100% free.

In this first part of a three-part series. you will begin learning how to use PHP to display and modify data from a MySQL database. This article is excerpted from chapter 9 of Learning PHP and MySQL, written by Michele Davis and Jon Phillips (O'Reilly, 2006; ISBN: 0596101104). Copyright © 2006 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission from the publisher. Available from booksellers or direct from O'Reilly Media.

Now that you're comfortable using the MySQL client tools to manipulate data in the database, you can begin using PHP to display and modify data from the database. PHP has standard functions for working with the database.