Nearly every non-trivial application requires data persistence, and for an application of any significant size and scope, persistence is typically realized using a database. For open source and many other projects, the MySQL database is a very popular choice: it's free; it's fast, robust, and scalable; and it runs on all of the major platforms, allowing maximal use of available hardware resources. However, it's easy to throw away My SQL's speed and other advantages if your database design is inefficient. Needlessly duplicating data, using improper types for columns, overloading a single table where multiple tables should be used, failing to leverage the calculation features of MySQL, and making multiple queries instead of efficient, single query are some of the common mistakes.MySQL Database Design and Optimization, shows you how to identify, overcome, and avoid gross inefficiencies, and demonstrates how to maximize the many data manipulation features that MySQL has built-in.
MySQL Database Design and Optimization explains how to include tests and branching in your queries, how to normalize your database, and how to issue concurrent queries to boost performance, among many other design and optimization topics. If you're building or maintaining any significant application and are using MySQL, this book is for you.