MySQL Cookbook

Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank my technical reviewers, Tim Allwine, David Lane, Hugh Williams, and Justin Zobel. They made several helpful suggestions and corrections with regard to both organizational structure and technical accuracy. Several members of MySQL AB were gracious enough to add their comments: In particular, principal MySQL developer Monty Widenius combed the text and spotted many problems. Arjen Lentz, Jani Tolonen, Sergei Golubchik, and Zak Greant reviewed sections of the manuscript as well. Andy Dustman, author of the Python MySQLdb module, and Mark Matthews, author of MM.MySQL and MySQL Connector/J, also provided feedback. My thanks to all for improving the manuscript; any errors remaining are my own.

Laurie Petrycki, executive editor, conceived the idea for the book and provided valuable overall editorial guidance and cattle-prodding. Lenny Muellner, tools expert, assisted in the conversion of the manuscript from my original format into something printable. David Chu acted as editorial assistant. Ellie Volckhausen designed the cover, which I am happy to see is reptilian in nature. Linley Dolby served as the production editor and proofreader, and Colleen Gorman, Darren Kelly, Jeffrey Holcomb, Brian Sawyer, and Claire Cloutier provided quality control.

Thanks to Todd Greanier and Sean Lahman of The Baseball Archive for all their hard work in putting together the baseball database that is used for several of the examples in this book.

Some authors are able to compose text productively while sitting at a keyboard, but I write better while sitting far from a computer—preferably with a cup of coffee. That being so, I’d like to acknowledge my debt to the Sow’s Ear coffee shop in Verona for providing pleasant surroundings in which to spend many hours scribbling on paper.

My wife Karen provided considerable support and understanding in what turned out to be a much longer endeavor than anticipated. Her encouragement is much appreciated, and her patience something to marvel at.