One reviewer said he had set up his first application the same day he bought the book. The only problem I have had so far was that I had an old version of Linux. I got an error message: "This version of MySQL requires Linux 2.0 or higher". I upgraded my favorite Linux distribution (Patrick Volckerding's Slackware), again followed the instructions in the book and MySQL came up without any problems.

I was amazed how small it was. The zip file was only 4 MB. Compare that to the more than 100 megabytes needed to download Oracle 8i Lite (that's Lite, not "Enterprise" edition, not even the "Personal" edition of Oracle 8i). And yet it has more than 80-85% of Oracle's functionality, per Yarger in the "Author Interview" page. That's actually mind-boggling. Somebody actually put that much of Oracle's functionality into 4% of the code Oracle needs?

I started reading the section about normalization, wondering if yet another overview of the topic could provide much value. It was the clearest explanation I have seen so far. I am not surprised the Linux Journal reviewer praised it.

I have only started reading the book, but so far it definitely lives up to my high expectations of an O'Reilly book.

I am surprised so many of the Reader reviews sound so negative. I am glad I bought the book first and read the reviews afterwards. I am actually rather annoyed to think that I might never have bought the book otherwise. Then again, I try to take reader reviews with a grain of salt. After all, how much time and effort goes into writing a book, compared to writing a review of it?

I hope the people who read these reviews also read the other background materials on this site, such as the Author Interview. That should give them a more balanced view that better matches the impression I have so far.

Leif Ohman