Rating: 

Visuals

Good. Page numbers and section title can be found on the bottom of every page.

Audience

From the book: "This book should be useful for anybody who uses MySQL, ranging from individuals [...] to professional database and web developers."

That is a pretty broad range, basically from introductory to advanced. Nevertheless I would have to say that the book meets this challenge well. This book should be of use to anybody who uses MySQL.

Practicality:

I have to say that I have fallen for Cookbook style books. While I still thoroughly enjoy more theory heavy books, cookbooks can really deliver in the immediate practicality department.

The MySQL Cookbook is a good example of this. This book has dozens upon dozens of recipes that will likely have some measure of application in whatever MySQL dependent system you are working on.

Each recipe contains a brief "Problem" scenario, followed by an often equally brief "Solution", and finally a more lengthy discussion that shows how to actually implement the solution.

Overall

I am very pleased with this book. Mr. DuBois and O'Reilly did a great job. For instance, one of the things I especially like is that often multiple solutions are offered. For example if you were to look up Section 6.6 "Extracting Parts of Dates or Times" you will find the solution lists 3 possible options. The discussion section contains 5 pages of examples of how you might use those options to extract the desired data.

If you fit in to the intended audience of "anybody who uses MySQL", I would highly recommend this book.