Great book!
If you don't like command-line interface with your computer, phpMyAdmin is a great tool! And if you want to learn the right way to interact with phpMyAdmin, this book is your perfect resource!
I stumbled upon a phpMyAdmin screencast by DeLisle at a conference. His calm and collected presentation style along with a great clarity for instruction is repeated in this book.
Mastering phpMyAdmin has enabled me to move out of my limited comfort zone with database management in general. The book is clearly laid out to give you step-by-step instructions to make a database work for you.
I highly recommend this book, and DeLisle's Creating your MySQL Database: Practical Design Tips and Techniques as well. They are great books!
A nice update
I've got a review copy of the phpMyAdmin 2.8 book as well as the previous edition of this book. The old edition already was rather comprehensive and had all the features that phpMyAdmin has cleary laid out.
Still, the layout of the new edition improved a notch, this is a nice update. While you probably won't need the book if you already have the old edition, it is a nice book to help you get out the most of phpMyAdmin.
How to Use phpMyAdmin
The purpose of this book by Marc Delisle is to teach you how to use phpMyAdmin, which is a popular open source program for working with a MySQL database using the phpMyAdmin user-friendly graphic interface. Most PHP programmers use MySQL for their database needs because these two technologies work so well together. For those who have not yet worked with phpMyAdmin and MySQL, this book will help you get up and running quickly. And for those programmers who have taught themselves to use phpMyAdmin by trial and error, this book will introduce and explain those features you may have missed.
The author begins with an introduction to phpMyAdmin. He covers the main features and some history of the program. After that, he jumps right in to the installation, configuration and security issues for the Linux, Apache and IIS servers. Of course, if you are using phpMyAdmin with your web host account, you may not have much control over these issues. Once the program is installed, he explains the user interface and discusses those easy-to-use features that make this program so popular.
Delisle starts with the basic tasks such as creating databases and setting up tables. He explains the different types of data, table fields and the various choices you have when performing many tasks. Next, he shows you how to move tables between databases and how to backup, copy and move databases between servers. Although the user-friendly graphic interface is what makes phpMyAdmin so nice, you may at some time need to use the SQL commands alone. The author covers the most common tasks you may encounter. Finally, he moves on to more advanced issues such as administrative tasks and generating database reports and documentation.
Marc Delisle is a developer and project administrator for the phpMyAdmin project. He also teaches at the College de Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.
