This part will help you familiarize yourself with MySQL by providing a tutorial for you to try. As you work through it, you will create a sample database and some tables, and then interact with the database by adding, retrieving, deleting, and modifying information in the tables. During the process of working with the sample database, you will learn the following things:

• The basics of the SQL language that MySQL understands. (If you already know SQL from having used some other RDBMS, it would be a good idea to skim through this tutorial to see whether MySQL’s version of SQL differs from the version with which you are familiar.)
• How to communicate with a MySQL server using a few of the standard MySQL client programs. As noted in the previous section, MySQL operates using a client/server architecture in which the server runs on the machine containing the databases and clients connect to the server over a network. This tutorial is based largely on the mysql client program, which reads SQL queries from you, sends them to the server to be executed, and displays the results so that you can see what happened. mysql runs on all platforms supported by MySQL and provides the most direct means of interacting with the server, so it’s the logical client to begin with.
• This tutorial uses my_super_db as the sample database name, but you might need to use a different name as you work through the material. For example, someone else on your system already might be using the name my_super_db for their own database, or your MySQL administrator might assign you a different database name. In either case, substitute the actual name of your database for my_super_db whenever you see the latter in examples.

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