Review Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11

Meta info.
Title: "Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11" <http://www.packtpub.com/phpmyadmin-3rd-edition/book>
Subtitle: "for effective MySQL Management"
Author: "Marc Delisle" <http://www.packtpub.com/author_view_profile/id/3>
ISBN: 978-1-847194-18-3
Publisher: "Packt Publishing" <http://www.packtpub.com>
Pages: 318
Date: March 2008
Price: £21,99 - $34,99

Prelude.
When I was asked by Manuel Lemos of phpclasses.org to review a book about phpMyAdmin I was a bit hesitant as I'm not using it myself. I prefer to use WebMin, and I wouldn't want to compare the two as they have not much in common. I personally choose WebMin because I do not need the overhead phpMyAdmin gives me. Never the less I took the job on and running an (at that time still experimental) Ubuntu Hardy box, I installed PhpMyAdmin in a few clicks and had a fully running system without any problems. I mention this because it shows how user friendly phpMyAdmin is with all it's harnessed power. It's a effortless system and obviously therefor the interface of choice for many ISP's. But again IMHO phpMyAdmin is underestimated if you think that that would be the only place where you can deploy it. Thanks to Mozilla's experiment bringing web apps to your desktop with the Prism system, you can easily use phpMyAdmin for *all* database administration locally too. Now if I got you curious beyond the point of experimenting and you actually want to give phpMyAdmin a try, this book is probably all you ever need.

The author.
Marc Delisle, who wrote 'Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11', a book already in it's third edition, is an active member of the MYSQL Developers Guild and actively involved in the development of phpMyAdmin. He was assisted by three 'reviewers' that all three have in one way or another worked on or with phpMyAdmin. This resulted in a book that leaves nothing to be asked about the primary MySQL web interface currently around. Marc has a clear, but sometimes clinical, writing style. Never the less he is able to share his knowledge in a way, even the most adept MySQL user can understand. Of course this is also an achievement of PhpMyAdmin that was programmed in a way that offers a clear and easy to understand interface.

The book.
Starts off with a preface describing each chapter and it's goals. Chapter 1 obviously will start with some background information on the application, chapter 2 will help you install the thingy (as I mentioned on a *nix box probably just a few clicks in your distribution manager). And if your unlucky enough to have hooked up with an ISP that doesn't have PhpMyAdmin pre-installed this chapter talks you trough the setup until you have a running system that you can admire in a walk around provided in chapter 3. The following chapters 4 to 14 show you how to create a database and how to export/import your work. The real every day dull work from searching, changing, adding and removing data and how PhpMyAdmin can facilitate in storing and saving queries and procedures. Chapter 15 to 19 go into deep water showing among other things how to administrate several aspects, from language files to character sets up to managing MYSQL from PhpMyAdmin. Chapter 20 last but not least goes into the topic of problem solving, debugging and bug reporting. Everything has been setup clearly with many illustrated examples and as usual for Packt Publishing books the Example code can be downloaded from their website.

Conclusion.
The book does definitely what has been promised. It leaves no secrets to uncover and when you have read it you probably won't need to read it again. Not only because the book is clear but again because of the logic behind PhpMyAdmin. So if you are a first time user of PhpMyAdmin this book is definitely worth every penny. What has bothered me a bit is the targeted audience on the back of the book. I don't think an experience developer will find much of use in the book. If you are a seasoned user of Php and Mysql (what experienced developer isn't?) this book reveals nothing that you won't extract from the interface. But the adept user will find a wealth of information and I think the book will also do fine in a instructional environment. It is also a good example of the philosophy behind Packt Publishing and I would like to point out once more that a book bought with them supports the Open Source project (in this case PhpMyAdmin) financially.