Book Review – Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.8 by Marc Delisle

Author: Marc Delisle ISBN: 1847191606 Publisher: Packt Publishing 2 edition 316 pages Published: Oct 2006		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^R 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^R, Apache^R 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.