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

1.3. Communicating with MySQL

All your interaction with the database is accomplished by passing messages to the MySQL server. The MySQL server must be able to understand the instructions that you send it. You communicate using Structured Query Language (SQL), which is a standard computer language understood by most database management systems.

To make a request that MySQL can understand, you build an SQL query and send it to the MySQL server.

1.3.1. Building SQL queries

SQL is almost English; it's made up largely of English words, put together into strings of words that sound similar to English sentences. In general (fortunately), you don't need to understand any arcane technical language to write SQL queries that work.

The first word of each query is its name, which is an action word (a verb) that tells MySQL what you want to do. The queries that we discuss in this minibook are CREATE, DROP, ALTER, SHOW, INSERT, LOAD, SELECT, UPDATE, and DELETE. This basic vocabulary is sufficient to create — and interact with — databases on Web sites.

The query name is followed by words and phrases — some required and some optional — that tell MySQL how to perform the action. For instance, you always need to tell MySQL what to create, and you always need to tell it which table to insert data into or to select data from.

The following is a typical SQL query. As you can see, it uses English words:

SELECT lastName FROM Member

This query retrieves all the last names stored in the table named