Rating: 

If you are an experienced database developer or DBA, you’re probably better off Google-ing around or just lurking on the MySQL DEV website (http://dev.mysql.com/). This book won’t teach you anything you don’t know (or can’t find elsewhere).

If you are a novice web/DB developer, and you purchase this book, proceed with caution. I found the book to be incomplete; there is no mentioning of stored procedures, minimal discussion around transactions (what about SAVEPOINTs?), and when in Chapter 8 “Doing More with MySQL” the authors mention the use of functions “to meet more complex information needs” they mention only the RAND() function?! What about IFNULL()/NULLIF() , CASE… just to name a few.

I also found a few “accidents waiting to happen”: when teaching about creating indexes, why would one want to DROP the table you’re working with and recreate it with a “KEY” (pages 204-5) and only introduce the ALTER TABLE/ADD INDEX on page 217. Read (to the end) before you execute!

If you bought this book, you should probably buy MySQL Stored Procedure Programming By Guy Harrison, Steven Feuerstein (O'Reilly) to get a better picture of MySQL.