Your first MySQL Database
Hoping that you've successfully installed the MySQL
distribution onto your system, let's start creating your
first MySQL database. Last month we used Microsoft Access to
create a simple Clients database which contained
two tables -- we'll recreate that pleasantly simple structure
here in MySQL. Although this is a simple example,
it should lay the groundwork for any other relational
database you wish to create and manage in MySQL.
To recap from last month, let's look once again at the
Clients database, and the two tables it consists
of:
Clients database with two tables.
billing: a sample database table
| ClientName |
ClientEmail |
Invoice |
Total |
Paid |
| Loganberry Inc. |
logan@pluc.net |
099050101 |
50.00 |
Yes |
| Smart Corp. |
smarties@pants.net |
099050102 |
450.00 |
|
| Arlene Von Smitten |
arly@frau.net |
099060101 |
500.00 |
Yes |
| Sanford & Son |
rfoxx@pickup.com |
099060102 |
75.00 |
|
| B. Gates |
bill@me.com |
099060103 |
25000.00 |
|
| Fanny Farmer |
ffarmer@sausagelinks.net |
099070101 |
55.50 |
Yes |
|
invoices: a sample database table
| Invoice |
Hours |
Rate |
| 099050101 |
1 |
50 |
| 099050102 |
9 |
50 |
| 099060101 |
12.5 |
40 |
| 099060102 |
1 |
75 |
| 099060103 |
50 |
500 |
| 099070101 |
3.7 |
15 |
|
We'll assume that the data for these tables now resides in
tab-delimited text files; in other words, the text
file containing the data for billing would look like:
Loganberry Inc. logan@pluc.net 099050101 50.00 1
As summarized earlier, we need to first establish this
database in MySQL and create the skeletal structure for
the tables -- then we can import the raw data.
Step 1: Create a new database using mysqladmin.
/path/to/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root -p rootpassword create Clients
By default, the MySQL server will create a subdirectory for
the new database, Clients, in mysql/data.
If you would like to store your databases somewhere other
than the MySQL installation path, you need to start mysqld
with the --datadir parameter; simply execute
mysqld --help on a command line to view usage details.
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