PHP & MySQL® Web Development All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies®

4.1. Adding Information to a Database

Every database needs data. For example, you might want to add data to your database so that your users can look at it. Or you might want to create an empty database for users to put data into. In either scenario, data is added to the database.

If your data is still on paper, you can enter it directly into a MySQL database, one row at a time, in an SQL query. However, if you have a lot of data, this process could be tedious and involve a lot of typing. Suppose that you have information on 1,000 products that must be added to your database. Assuming that you're greased lightening on a keyboard and can enter a row per minute, that's 16 hours of rapid typing — well, rapid editing, anyway. Doable, but not fun. On the other hand, suppose that you need to enter 5,000 members of an organization into a database and that it takes five minutes to enter each member. Now you're looking at more than 400 hours of typing — who has time for that?

If you have a large amount of data to enter, consider some alternatives. Sometimes scanning in the data is an option. Or perhaps you need to beg, borrow, or hire some help. In many cases, it might be faster to enter the data into a big text file than to enter each row in a separate SQL query.

The SQL query LOAD can read data from a big text file (or even a small text file). So, if your data is already in a computer file, you can work with that file; you don't need to type all the data again. Even if the data is in ...