I will take MySQL certification exams, therefore I am going through MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide. It is a pretty cool book in that it goes to the point right away without many wasted words. Too many technical books dance around the topic, fill the volume with screen shots, but do not deliver the goods in the end. I am reading the Safari online version. With so many pages, I can see the physical book can be bulky.

Anyway, some comments and observations:

1. Sybase, MySQL, and Sql Server’s definition and implementation of database and schema are somewhat close. I dislike Microsoft’s definition and usage of schema, especially in Sql Server 2005. It is very confusing to new or DBAs from other platforms.

Sybase, MySQL, and Sql Server all support the USE Database statement;

2. I like mysql command line tool and how the result set is displayed. It looks clean and neat to me, although, like command line tools from other database platforms, when the result set gets wider, it gets messy;

3. Similar to Sql Server, MySQL also has the system and status variables that starts with @@. And, like Sql Server, you can just do SELECT @@Variable to retrieve its value, for example, SELECT @@sql_mode;

4. Played with MySQL Query Browser a little bit. Ctrl – E is the keyboard shortcut for statement execution, the same as Sql Server. However, F5 does not execute the statement in MySQL Query Browser.