Expert PHP and MySQL: Application Design and Development

CHAPTER 8

Data Conversion

I only hope they spell my name right.

—Astronaut Alan Shepard, onhow he hoped to be remembered

I guess someone somewhere has built a database application that starts with an empty database, but I’ve never seen one. There’s always something preexisting that has to be converted to the new system, even if it’s only a roster of volunteers tacked to a bulletin board or a file box of frequent customers. Much more often, there’s more to it than that: spreadsheets, papers, e-mail messages, text files, or perhaps an existing database system, maybe based on FileMaker, Microsoft Access, or even MySQL.

The subjects I cover in ...