bluethundr has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello again, folks!

Sorry if this is the wrong forum for this question. I told you guys that I feel that I do not deserve to be a monk, because I am as yet a seeker, not a dispenser of perl wisdom. But I want to publicly thank ysth for clueing me in to the whole Sainthood via Seniority Simulation model. Very interesting. I'll try to be less sell effacing. :)

But if you ever had a reason to mod me down, this would be it! Because I am completely unclear if this is the right place to be asking for this type of advice!

Long and short of it, was I was able to climb back on the llama far more easily than my addled brain would permit me to believe. It was thanks to the monks advice from yesterday that this were even possible!

I am burning, yearning, like a hunka techno lust to climb onto the camel (not in THAT way, sicko! ;p) but unfortunately I have imposed an agenda on myself before I will allow myself to go camel riding.

But part of the hurry in learning perl (aside from my love of languages and ever growing love of Perl) is that my friends and I have some Ralph Kramden ideas for setting up our little lemonade stands on the net.

To set THAT up, I'll have to delve into SQL even before I get to regular expressions, which is the most looked forward to project in my ongoing self erudition, along with (now) Perl. I am pretty sure I'm gonna go with MySQL but the question is which book to buy? I've actually heard some BAD reviews on Slashdot of O'Reilly's title. Exceedingly RARE for an O'Reilly book! That and the Linux Clustering book by them are the ONLY two O'Reilly books I've heard badmouthed and my experience with them has been overwhelmingly pleasant.

Long and short of it is I'm sure that some of you may be familiar with this MySQL app and perhaps have some opinions on what worked for you. I'd even welcome comments such as "read the docs". But I am a total database n00b and I'm unsure how much the docs assume one to know. If you want to recommend multiple books (as I often do when recommending language instruction in C and C++) all the better.

But first I need a sort of quick-n-dirty approach to get me started. I started with Perl in 21 Days by Laura Lemay which I found to be a piece of crap after I was wisely advised by many of you to jump ship --- SOON! --- to the Llama. Thanks for that advice as well. I am making the most of it.

THANKS!!!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: SQL Advice::Which Tome?
by Callum (Chaplain) on Jun 25, 2004 at 14:04 UTC
    I'd advocate Paul Dubois' books MySQL followed by MySQL and Perl for the Web

    The latter is the better book IMO, but can be a bit technical for a beginner, the former should provide all the foundations you need.

    EDIT: changed the URLs to point to .com instead of .co.uk for the benefit of the USians in the audience.

[reply]
      I second both recommendations! Since you're new to databases in general, the "MySQL" book is probably the one you should start with. MySQL has some setup and security issues to get by first, and the "MySQL" book does a good job of explaining what needs to be done. That's a very good reference book too. I bought the "MySQL and Perl for the Web" by Paul Dubois, but I haven't read much of it yet. What I have read of it I liked very much. I like Paul's writing style - I find it very easy to follow and not a lot of fluff - just the stuff you need to know.

      HTH.

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Re: SQL Advice::Which Tome?
by Sifmole (Chaplain) on Jun 25, 2004 at 15:01 UTC
    Programming the Perl DBI by Alligator Descartes

    Of course, primarily useful in understanding how to use databases from Perl. It will do very little to teach you database theory or significant SQL

[reply]
      I seem to recall from a conversation a couple of months ago that the second edition of "Programming the Perl DBI" is due out this Fall.

      ----
      I Go Back to Sleep, Now.

      OGB

[reply]
        That would seem about right. Seems like close to a year ago Tim Bunce announced that the 2nd edition would be out in about a year - that was on the DBI mailing list.
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Re: SQL Advice::Which Tome?
by jeffa (Bishop) on Jun 25, 2004 at 17:45 UTC

    I highly recommend Understanding SQL. I bought it while i was attending a college database course and i found it to be a refreshingly "down to earth" book. Create the database tables, work through the examples and you should be up and running fairly quickly. I still keep this book next to my work computer as a quick reference "by example" book. It is, however, out of print, but there are still used copies around for pretty cheeep.

    jeffa

    L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)
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•Re: SQL Advice::Which Tome?
by merlyn (Sage) on Jun 27, 2004 at 01:44 UTC
    I am pretty sure I'm gonna go with MySQL
    You should seriously look into the full-featured PostgreSQL, as long as you're starting out fresh. And there's at least two free books online already as well, specifically about PostgreSQL.

    -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
    Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

[reply]
Re: SQL Advice::Which Tome?
by Anonymous Monk on Jun 26, 2004 at 18:42 UTC
    I would recommend SQL in Easy Steps. The book teachs SQL using the MySQL database. It does not teach you to be a DBA or to setup security. The book is an easy read made up primarily of sample code and output screenshots. I've loaned this book to a coworker where our database is Oracle.

    My goal is to query the database from my scripts. One of the next books on my bookshelf is MySQL and Perl for the Web.

    Edited by Chady -- fixed link.

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