MySQL (pronounced "my ess cue el") is an open source relational database management system (RDBMS) that uses Structured Query Language (SQL), the most popular language for adding, accessing, and processing data in a database. Because it is open source, anyone can download MySQL and tailor it to their needs in accordance with the general public license. MySQL is noted mainly for its speed, reliability, and flexibility
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1. But what if you really want to store the timestamp data, such as the publication date of the article?
Create two columns of type TIMESTAMP and use the second one for your real data.
2. Can you save your connection settings to a conf file?
Yes, and name it ~/.my.conf. You might want to change the permissions on the file to 600, so that it?s not readable by others.
3. Explain advantages of InnoDB over MyISAM?
Row-level locking, transactions, foreign key constraints and crash recovery.
4. Explain advantages of MyISAM over InnoDB?
Much more conservative approach to disk space management - each MyISAM table is stored in a separate file, which could be compressed then with myisamchk if needed. With InnoDB the tables are stored in tablespace, and not much further optimization is possible. All data except for TEXT and BLOB can occupy 8,000 bytes at most. No full text indexing is available for InnoDB. TRhe COUNT(*)s execute slower than in MyISAM due to tablespace complexity.
5. Explain data type TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
The column exhibits the same behavior as a single timestamp column in a table with no other timestamp columns.
6. Explain federated tables.
Introduced in MySQL 5.0, federated tables allow access to the tables located on other databases on other servers.
7. Explain the difference between BOOL, TINYINT and BIT.
Prior to MySQL 5.0.3: those are all synonyms. After MySQL 5.0.3: BIT data type can store 8 bytes of data and should be used for binary data.
8. Explain the difference between FLOAT, DOUBLE and REAL.
FLOATs store floating point numbers with 8 place accuracy and take up 4 bytes. DOUBLEs store floating point numbers with 16 place accuracy and take up 8 bytes. REAL is a synonym of FLOAT for now.
9. Explain the difference between MyISAM Static and MyISAM Dynamic.
In MyISAM static all the fields have fixed width. The Dynamic MyISAM table would include fields such as TEXT, BLOB, etc. to accommodate the data types with various lengths. MyISAM Static would be easier to restore in case of corruption, since even though you might lose some data, you know exactly where to look for the beginning of the next record.
10. Explain the difference between mysql and mysqli interfaces in PHP?
mysqli is the object-oriented version of mysql library functions.