MySQL in a Nutshell

Creating a Database and Tables

Assuming that you have all of the privileges necessary to create and modify databases on your server, let’s look at how to create a database and then tables within a database. For the examples in this chapter, we will build a database for a fictitious bookstore:

CREATE DATABASE bookstore;

In this brief SQL statement, we have created a database called bookstore. You may have noticed that the commands or reserved words are printed here in uppercase letters. This isn’t necessary; MySQL is case-insensitive with regards to reserved words for SQL statements and clauses. Database and table names are case-sensitive on operating systems that are case-sensitive, such as Unix systems, but not on systems that are case-insensitive, such as Windows. As a general convention, though, reserved words in SQL documentation are presented in uppercase letters and database names, table names, and column names in lowercase letters.

You may have also noticed that this SQL statement ends with a semicolon. An SQL statement may be entered over more than one line, and it’s not until the semicolon is entered that the client sends the statement to the server to read and process it. To cancel an SQL statement once it’s started, enter \c instead of a semicolon.

With our database created, we can switch the default database for the session to the new database like so:

USE bookstore;

Next, we will create our first table, in which we will later add data. We’ll start by creating a table to contain ...