Good self-study resource

This book is a necessary but not entirely sufficient resource if you plan to complete the 5.x developer and/or DBA exams with self-study. Most of the subject areas present on the exams are covered in enough detail to easily pass if you are experienced with another database product and can apply that experience. (FYI, I have 15+ years working with Oracle/SQL Server and have dabbled with MySQL since 3.x, passed all 4 exams using this guide).

That said, you will likely need to supplement the book by reading the MySQL documentation if you wish to get as much knowledge as possible from the study process. Certainly try out each command on a test MySQL instance multiple times using version 5.x (NOT 5.1 where some behaviors have changed).

The practice questions provided are not all in multiple-choice format as you will encounter on the exam, which can be a good mental exercise for review, but the answer formats can be frustrating in some cases, as in the case of a multiple-choice question with five possible letter choices, wherein the answer is a paragraph that doesn't indicate the correct letter choices. Trivial but annoying.

Be sure you complete all practice questions from the accompanying CD and understand why your answers were right or wrong. There are no labs or practical exercises included, although a sample schema is included from which many of the practice questions are drawn.

If you are not taking the exams, this is still a good primer on MySQL.

Other Reviews

• Good self-study resource
• Learning MySql
• Nirdesh Mohan
• It does exactly what it is for
• Solid material for exam or not