The Bottom Line
High Performance MySQL is a wonderful reference for database administrators migrating to the MySQL platform, particularly in enterprise deployments. It includes detailed coverage of optimization, backups, replication and load balancing -- all topics that are often neglected by the beginner "how to" texts.
Pros
- Outstanding coverage of enterprise topics
- Clear explanations of MySQL specifics
- Outlines the pros and cons of various configuration options
Cons
- Covers MySQL 4
Description
- Concise text that covers enterprise MySQL issues in a comprehensive manner.
- Packed with explanatory examples highlighting the pros and cons of various configuration options.
- Provides good general advice on the operation of an enterprise relational database.
Guide Review - High Performance MySQL
Jeremy Zawodny and Derek Balling's book follows is of the same great caliber we've come to expect from O'Reilly technical references. This book is designed for the professional database administrator who is either working with MySQL forthe first time or is grappling with the challenges of using this platform in the enterprise.
One word of warning -- this is not an introductory text. It's not designed for those seeking to learn about database design or get their hands on a database for the first time. It's a highly targeted book that will help you squeeze that last bit of performance out of your MySQL enterprise platform. The topics covered in this book (replication, load balancing, backups and optimization) are clearly of interest to those that administer large-scale databases.
Zawodny and Balling describe these complex topics in a concise manner -- at 276 pages this is a fairly short text, but the information to page count ratio is quite good.
