Intro to MySQL

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Open the XAMPP Control Panel and start the MySQL
service. Next click on the adjacent Admin button or
open a browser and enter the following address:
http://localhost/phpmyadmin/

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Click on the Databases tab, and create a new database for quotes

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Looking at a site like brainquote.com, we realize that
there is a database behind the scenes.

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 Brainyquote entities
• We see items on the webpage like
– Quotes
– Authors
– Topics

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Choosing a quote reveals more: some of the attributes of the
entities as well as some of the relationships between entities.

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 Attributes and relationships
• Attributes:
– An author has an occupation, a nationality, a birth
date and death date.
• Relationships:
– A quote is attributed to just one author, but an
author may have many quotes attributed to
him/her. (Said to be a one-to-many relationship)
– A quote might pertain to many topics, and a topic
has many quotes that pertain to it. (Said to be a
many-to-many relationship)

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Click on the database you made and start to create a table for
Author data. Choose 7 columns. Click Go.

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Name the fields, choose their type, decode whether or nor they
can be null. (I also made the id field “auto-increment” A.I.)

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Scroll down and find the Save button. (The Go button is
to add another column.)

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Enter some author data and click Go.

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Result of “inserting” author data.

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Click the Browse tab to see the results so far.

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Some decisions
• I did not insert an ID because I chose the ID
field to be “auto-incremented”. An ID should
be unique so that it can serve as the primary
key – a field which uniquely identifies each
row/record in a table.
• That reminds me I forgot to make the ID into
the primary key.

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Click on the Structure tab, check the ID
field, and click on the Primary key icon.

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Result of adding the primary key.

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Other decisions
• The remaining fields were chosen to have the
type of varchar with lengths of 30 or 20.

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Could do better
• It might be better to have a list of nationalities
(in another table) and choose the author’s
nationality from the list rather than typing it in
and risking more typo’s.
• The same goes for the profession field.

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Dates can be tricky
• You might have seen in the list of field types a
“date type”. This choice would seem to be
better for the author’s birth date and death
date. But I have seen problems arise with
more “historical” dates such as these. The
dates supported by the date type don’t go
back as far as one might like.

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 Now for the quote table/entity
• We will want
– An ID to identify the quote
– The text of the quote itself
– A quoteAuthorID to establish the relationship
between the author and the quote

This number is probably the

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Creating the quoteQuote table
Create table, name it,
add a column if necessary

For quoteID choose

For quoteAuthorID
choose INDEX for Index.
(This choice is necessary
for establishing the
relationship.)

Click Go to Add a column

Click save to make the table

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Use the drop-down list to say that the quoteQuote’s
quoteAuthorID will come from the quoteAuthorID field of the
quoteAuthor table. Click save.

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With the quoteQuote table selected, click on the Insert tab. Enter the
text of the quote. The quoteAuthorID comes from a drop-down which
forces it to match one of the authorID’s.

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We just established a “foreign
key”.

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Result of the quote insert.

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Browsing the quotes.

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Add at least one more author

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Add at least two more quotes

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Next let us make a quoteTopic table with two fields an ID
(primary key and auto-incremented) and a name (varchar 30)

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Next we will make a bridge/junction table to establish the many-
to-many relationship between quote and topic.

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Creating the bridge table with two fields – the
combination of the two will serve as the primary key.

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Go to Relation view on the “bridge”
table.

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Use the drop-down to establish the connection to the other tables. In
this bridge table the fields serve as both primary keys and foreign keys.

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Insert a quoteTopic (or two or three)

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Browse the topics

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Insert some relationships between
quotes and topics.

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Browse quote topics

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Click on the database (as opposed to a table within the
database). Then click on the Designer tab.

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Result of Designer

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What to submit for homework
• Make a screen capture (by clicking Print
Screen or Alt+Print Screen and pasting the
result into a Word document) of the structure
(the Structure tab) of your tables and the
contents of your tables (the Browse tab).
• Also make a screen capture of the Designer.

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