Creating MySQL Database: Practical Design Tips and Techniques

byWriter •September 13, 2022

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Creating your MySQL Database: Practical Design Tips and Techniques

Creating MySQL Database

Introduction

MySQL, launched in 1995, has become the most popular open source database system. The popularity of MySQL and phpMyAdmin has allowed many non-IT specialists to build dynamic websites with a MySQL backend. This book is a short but complete guide showing beginners how to design good data structures for MySQL. It teaches how to plan the data structure and how to implement it physically using MySQL's model.

Need for MySQL Design

MySQL's popularity has attracted many web developers, some of them having no prior IT experience. When faced with the task of transforming a static website into a dynamic/transactional one, or integrating corporate data into the site, developers are sometimes inclined to improvise a data structure. This structure (or lack of structure) may work for a certain time but later fails because of lack of depth. Maybe the system initially works because it started small, with only a few functions planned and implemented, but falls apart when users ask more of it.

A poorly designed data structure can only be patched to a certain extent. It can also have scaling issues, when the initial testing has been done with only a few rows of data. The apparent facility of using the tools may hide the fact that database design depends upon essential principles. Eluding them can render an application costly to maintain, because correcting data structural errors after application coding has begun is time consuming.