MySQL wizardry - Conclusion (
Page 4 of 4 )
DISCLAIMER
The Wizard is a fictitious character. He does not exist in
the wild, although some laboratories in Outer China are collecting evidence
about the theoretical possibility that he could be real. Any resemblance with
any individual in the physical world is purely coincidental. Translated into
plain English: if you think that the Wizard looks like somebody you know,
especially if he or she is a pain in the neck, it is because you are unlucky.
Wizards are grumbling fellows who call Perl or SQL their mother tongue and feel
ill at ease while speaking English (or Italian, Hungarian, Flemish or whichever
language they use d to speak before learning C++. They are usually kind and
willing to please you, but they often manage to upset you while doing so.
Wizards also enjoy gathering with others of their kind, since they find common
people boring. However, if you put two wizards in the same room, you are likely
to see some sparks after a while. That's why wizards are usually alone, and they
like to be left as such.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I want to thank many people who made this article
possible. All the programmers who created GNU, Linux, MySQL, StarOffice, perl,
DBI, nedit (I am not the Wizard. I can't cope with vi!), and many utilities
without which I would be most likely writing about embedded databases in C.
(There is nothing wrong about embedding databases, and doing that in C is quite
honorable, since I have done that for a while, but MySQL is a toy on a totally
different scale). In a word, I am grateful to all the open source community,
which has made profitable exchanging knowledge (not to mention the fun!).
RESOURCES
You must have realized that I (or perhaps the Wizard) have
taken for granted that you know the basics of MySQL, SQL, client server
architecture, perl, the DBI, and maybe something else that I don't recall now.
Don't be angry with me. Teaching the basics is a social duty, but sometimes it
makes you feel good when you can exchange some unusual experience. You might be
interested in a few links that offer the basics that I have so happily skipped:
http://www.mysql.com/documentation
One of the best manuals you can find about MySQL, the one written by the
developers themselves. In addition,
http://www.devshed.com offers many tutorials
and articles for beginners (and intermediate and expert users as well). DBI can
be learned online at
http://www.symbolstone.org/technology/perl/DBI
About Perl, I don't dare suggesting anything that could contravene the official
policy that TIMTOWTDI (there is more than one way to do it). Larry Wall has
written some thousand pages on this subject, with the conclusion that Perl's
official policy is that there is no official policy. I would leave it at that.
