MySQL is available in both source and binary form for Windows 95/98/Me/2000/ XP/NT. Most often, you will want to use the binary distribution, which comes with an automated installer and allows you to get MySQL up and running on your Windows

system in just a few minutes. However, if you’re the type who likes rolling your own, MySQL AB also makes MySQL source code available for Windows. In this section, I’ll be exploring the installation of both source and binary distributions on Windows 98 and Windows NT.

Installing MySQL from a Binary Distribution

Installing a binary distribution of MySQL on Windows is a fairly simple process--all you need to do is point and click your way through the installer provided with the distribution. Here’s how:

1. Log in as an administrator (if you’re using Windows NT or Windows 2000) and unzip the distribution archive to a temporary directory on your system. After extraction, your directory should look something like Figure 9.

FIGURE 9  The directory structure created on unpackaging
a MySQL binary distribution for Windows

2. Double-click the setup.exe file to begin the installation process. You should see a welcome screen (Figure 10). Click Next.

FIGURE 10  MySQL installation on Windows

3. Click Browse and select the directory in which MySQL is to be installed--in this example, select c:\program files\mysql (Figure 11). Click Next.

FIGURE 11  Selecting installation directory on Windows

4. Select the type of installation required (Figure 12). Click Next.

FIGURE 12  Selecting installation type

Most often, a Typical Installation will do; however, if you’re the kind who likes tweaking default settings, select the Custom Installation option, click Next, and then decide which components of the package should be installed (Figure 13).

FIGURE 13  Selecting components for a custom
installation on Windows

5. Click Next, and MySQL should now begin installing to your system (Figure 14).

FIGURE 14  Installation in progress on Windows

6. After installation is complete, you should see a screen like Figure 15. Click Finish.

FIGURE 15  Installation successfully completed on Windows

You should now be able to start the MySQL server by diving into the bin\ subdirectory of your MySQL installation and launching the WinMySQLadmin tool (winmysqladmin.exe). This tool provides a graphical user interface (GUI) to MySQL configuration, and it is by far the simplest way to configure MySQL on Windows systems.

The first time you start WinMySQLadmin, you will be asked for the name and password of the user which the server should run as (Figure 16).

FIGURE 16  Configuring the MySQL user on Windows
via WinMySQLadmin

After you have entered this information, WinMySQLadmin will automatically create the MySQL configuration file (named my.ini) and populate it with appropriate values for your system. You can edit these values at any time through the “my.ini Setup” tab of the main WinMySQLadmin application window (see Figure 17).

FIGURE 17  Editing MySQL configuration on Windows
via WinMySQLadmin

NOTE  You can also start the MySQL server by directly launching the mysqld.exe or mysqld-nt.exe binary from the bin\ subdirectory of your MySQL installation.

Once the server has started,WinMySQLadmin will minimize to a green icon in your Windows taskbar notification area. You can now proceed to test the server as described in the section “Testing MySQL” to ensure that everything is working as it should.

Note that you can bring the WinMySQLadmin application back to the foreground at any time by right-clicking the taskbar icon and choosing “Show Me” from the pop-up menu (see Figure 18).

FIGURE 18  Using the WinMySQLadmin system tray icon

Remember: this is chapter three of MySQL: The Complete Reference, by Vikram Vaswani (McGraw-Hill/Osborne, ISBN 0-07-222477-0, 2004). Vikram is the founder of Melonfire, and has had numerous articles featured on Dev Shed.  Buy this book now.