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 regard to reserved words for SQL
statements and clauses. Database and table names are case-sensitive on
operating systems that are case-sensitive, such as Linux 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 the SQL statement shown
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, albeit an empty one, we can switch the default database for the session to the new database like this:
USE bookstore
This saves us from having to specify the database name in every SQL statement. ...
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