Your first MySQL Database

Hoping that you've successfully installed the MySQL distribution onto your system, let's start creating your first MySQL database. Last month we used Microsoft Access to create a simple Clients database which contained two tables -- we'll recreate that pleasantly simple structure here in MySQL. Although this is a simple example, it should lay the groundwork for any other relational database you wish to create and manage in MySQL.

To recap from last month, let's look once again at the Clients database, and the two tables it consists of:

Clients database with two tables.

billing: a sample database table ClientName ClientEmail Invoice Total Paid Loganberry Inc. logan@pluc.net 099050101 50.00 Yes Smart Corp. smarties@pants.net 099050102 450.00   Arlene Von Smitten arly@frau.net 099060101 500.00 Yes Sanford & Son rfoxx@pickup.com 099060102 75.00   B. Gates bill@me.com 099060103 25000.00   Fanny Farmer ffarmer@sausagelinks.net 099070101 55.50 Yes

invoices: a sample database table Invoice Hours Rate 099050101 1 50 099050102 9 50 099060101 12.5 40 099060102 1 75 099060103 50 500 099070101 3.7 15

We'll assume that the data for these tables now resides in tab-delimited text files; in other words, the text file containing the data for billing would look like:

Loganberry Inc.	logan@pluc.net	099050101	50.00	1
etc.

As summarized earlier, we need to first establish this database in MySQL and create the skeletal structure for the tables -- then we can import the raw data.

Step 1: Create a new database using mysqladmin.

/path/to/mysql/bin/mysqladmin 
-u root -p rootpassword create Clients

Note that we typed the above statement in one line and the linewraps above were added for legibility on this web page.

By default, the MySQL server will create a subdirectory for the new database, Clients, in mysql/data. If you would like to store your databases somewhere other than the MySQL installation path, you need to start mysqld with the --datadir parameter; simply execute mysqld --help on a command line to view usage details.

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Your MySQL Database: Step 2