Online Class: MySQL

Master MySQL: Propel Your Web Development to the Next Level

In the vast world of web development and database management, the choice of tools and platforms can make or break the efficiency and scalability of your applications. Enter MySQL – an open-source dynamo that not only offers cost-effectiveness but also packs the punch required to create robust, scalable, and dynamic web applications. But, like any powerful tool, the magic lies in mastering its potential. Whether you're crafting a new website or integrating a data-rich application, understanding MySQL's depths is pivotal. Our course is here to ensure you unlock MySQL’s unparalleled capabilities, transforming your projects from good to extraordinary.

Why MySQL Stands Out: Begin your journey with an overview of MySQL's landscape, diving into its history, core strengths, and why it consistently ranks among the top choices for database management. As we shed light on its advantages over its counterparts, you'll be equipped with the knowledge to justify its application in your projects.

Designing with Precision: At the heart of every robust application lies the intricate design of its tables. These are the foundational pillars that hold your data, determining not just storage efficiency but also data integrity. In this segment, we take you through the art and science of table design, emphasizing data modeling and integrity to protect your data from potential pitfalls like corruption or misinterpretations.

Crafting for Scalability: In the digital realm, stagnation can be detrimental. As your application grows, your database should evolve seamlessly alongside. We emphasize the principles of forward-thinking design, allowing you to visualize your application not just for its immediate needs, but for its future growth. Understand the nuances of architecture and habits that ensure when you scale, you do so with grace and efficiency, avoiding the pitfalls of retrospective adjustments.

Maintenance and Configuration Mastery: A well-designed database, like a finely-tuned engine, requires regular maintenance. Delve into the essentials of keeping your MySQL database running at its peak, exploring techniques, tools, and best practices that ensure longevity and optimum performance.

Building for Tomorrow: Beyond the technicalities, we also aim to instill a mindset of proactive planning. While designing for today, always have an eye on tomorrow. Learn the strategies that empower you to craft solutions that can stand the test of time and adapt to changing scenarios.

Future-Proof Your Projects with MySQL: In an era defined by rapid technological evolution, staying ahead of the curve is paramount. With this course, you're not just learning a tool; you're investing in a skill set that ensures your projects, whether personal or professional, have the foundational strength to evolve, adapt, and thrive.

Step into the realm of MySQL mastery and let's revolutionize the way you approach web development and database management. Your journey from novice to expert begins here!

Course Motivation

MySQL has a large portion of the online market. Where Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle were once dominant, MySQL's free architecture and improved interface through the years have made it one of the top three databases used across the world. It's used by some of the largest websites including Facebook and Pinterest. Small startups that use WordPress inherently use MySQL since the application is integrated with the database. Webmasters, ecommerce startups, bloggers, and programmers can all benefit by understanding and learning MySQL administration.

What is MySQL?

There are two regions in a website design: the front-end and the back-end. The front-end is the site design and interface users see when they open the site. The back-end is the database. The database is the power horse for an application. It houses all the data and information needed by the front-end. Webmasters have several options when choosing a database, and one of these options is MySQL.

Before you understand MySQL, it helps to understand database functionality. A database is made up of tables, stored procedures, and functions. These three parts drive the back-end of your application.

Tables are the database engine's storage components. Architecture of database storage is extremely technical, but an easy way to envision a database table is to visualize a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets have columns and rows. Where these columns and rows intercept are fields. The fields contain one item of data.

When you set up a spreadsheet, your columns make up the components of your data. For instance, a spreadsheet that contains customer information has a first name, last name and address column. Each row has a column of information. These rows represent your records. Using the customer example, each row is a customer.

This is a simplified way to explain a MySQL table, but it helps new database users envision how data is stored and represented. If you look at a MySQL table, it's laid out like a spreadsheet of information. The trick is to understand how to retrieve, filter, edit and delete data. This is what we do throughout this course.

Stored procedures are the programming objects within your database. For instance, suppose you want to select the last customer who ordered, and then send that customer an email. You could write a stored procedure. You can view stored procedures as small functions for your application. They perform certain functionality, which usually results in displayed, editing, inserting or updating data.

Functions are similar to regular programming functions. They act as standard procedures that you use regularly in your SQL programming. For instance, suppose you need to add two numbers each time you query your MySQL tables. Instead of writing stored procedure code each time you add the numbers, you can create a function and use it to save you programming time.

Why is MySQL So Popular?

MySQL isn't popular just because it's free. Most free software isn't associated with high-end enterprise solutions, but MySQL is an exception to this rule. MySQL can be used with small startups or high-traffic enterprise applications. Banks, social networks, universities and government agencies use MySQL as their database solution.

MySQL is also secure. Security is a sensitive issue, since the protection of your customer and employee records should be a major concern. With MySQL, administrators can encrypt data and set up authentication to protect all company assets.

There are several more open-source database applications on the market that were deployed after MySQL. MySQL's success is partly due to the numerous hosting companies that offer services with unlimited MySQL database services. Oracle and SQL Server are expensive platforms, and most hosting companies only offer 1 SQL Server if you choose to work with it instead of an open-source database solution. Since MySQL is free and open-source, hosting companies offer unlimited databases with a lower cost than Microsoft platforms. This type of marketing gave MySQL its strong foundation in application development in global cloud and desktop applications.

Relational Data Integrity

MySQL is a relational database. These systems offer data integrity. They are distinct from systems such as Mongo that relies on document style records. Relational databases are used in numerous applications, but the major reason they are used to create applications is for data integrity and transactional style record manipulation.

Relational databases work on the concept of a primary and foreign key relationship. The primary key is the main unique field that identifies a record. This unique identifier is then stored in other tables to build a relationship between a main table and a secondary related table. In this course, we use the concept of a customer and an order. Each customer has its own unique identifier, and then this identifier is stored in the order table. When you need to query MySQL with a list of customers and related orders, you join the two tables using specific SQL syntax.

MySQL is also a transactional database, which means that you can roll back changes to your database. For instance, suppose you want to delete a customer but you don't want to delete the customer if there are active order records associated with the customer. You attempt to delete the customer, but MySQL's relational foreign key constraints give you an error when you attempt to delete it. You can then roll back any changes you made based on commit and rollback features. You commit changes if there were no errors found, or you can roll back previous statements if an error is thrown by the database server.

Data integrity is what sets MySQL and other relational databases apart from more modern databases such as NoSQL. NoSQL databases such as Mongo are used for analytical data and capturing any number of unstructured data. MySQL requires your data to be more structured, so it's a reliable database system for people who want to secure the structure and relationship between tables.

In this course, we review relationships such as primary and foreign keys, transactional changes, committing and rolling back changes, and how structured data is stored in the MySQL database. It's important to understand relationships and relational data to effectively build and maintain a MySQL database architecture. If it's engineered incorrectly, you can have difficulties with performance and maintaining your data. We discuss configuring and maintaining performance on your database. We also discuss replication and how you can configure replicated database servers to create a mirrored backup of your existing MySQL database. We also discuss how you can manage replication for the best performance.