MySQL Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Version and Platform Notes

Development of the code in this book took place under MySQL 5.0 and 5.1. Because new features are added to MySQL on a regular basis, some examples will not work under older versions. For example, MySQL 5.0 introduces views, triggers, and stored procedures and functions, and the INFORMATION_SCHEMA metadata database. MySQL 5.1 introduces events.

On occasion, I point out workarounds that you can use in MySQL 4.1 to compensate for the lack of a 5.0 feature. For example, the INFORMATION_SCHEMA database is used extensively for getting information about table structure, but does not exist prior to MySQL 5.0. Sometimes this information can be obtained by using statements such as SHOW COLUMNS, and that’s what recipes in the first edition used. These recipes are still available from the Kitebird site as part of the recipes distribution for the first edition. If you have an older version of MySQL, you may find it worthwhile to obtain a copy of the older distribution.

The versions of the database API modules that were current as of this writing are Perl DBI 1.52, DBD::mysql 3.0, Ruby DBI 0.1.1, PEAR DB 1.7.6, MySQLdb 1.2.0, and MySQL Connector/J 3.1. Perl DBI requires Perl 5.6 or higher, although it’s slated to require Perl 5.8 or higher beginning with DBI 1.51. Ruby DBI requires Ruby 1.8.0 or higher. Most PHP scripts shown here will run under either PHP 4.1 or PHP 5 (I recommend PHP 5). MySQLdb requires Python 2.3.4 or higher. MySQL Connector/J requires Java SDK 1.2 ...