Installation overview

MySQL can be complicated to install. Because of it's client-server architecture, the database server itself typically installed on a headless server, that is a server without a screen or keyboard that is managed remotely. The process of installing the MySQL server software very significantly, and is dependent upon a number of factors including. The server operating system, the server environment, the database application, and many other considerations.

For our purposes we're using MySQL in a learning environment so this installation will be on a Desktop operating system. Either Windows or Mac OS 10. And it will be the same machine that you'll be using for testing. So, even though MySQL is a database server, it will be running on the same machine as the web client you'll be using for testing and learning. For the purposes of following the exercises in this course, I provided a web based MySQL client called SID SQL interactive demonstrator.

SID is written in php. So, in addition to requiring a MySQL server, it also requires a web server that supports php. You use it with a standard web browser. The good news is that there is an excellent cross platform package called XAMPP that includes MySQL, the Apache web server and PHP. In this chapter, I'll show you how to install and configure XAMPP for use with this course. If you're using a Desktop operating system other than Windows or Mac OS 10 you may still be able to install this environment, but you'll need to modify these instructions yourself.

If you have access to an existing MySQL installation that you can use for testing and learning purposes. You may use that, and you don't need to follow these instructions. Of course, your screen will look different and you will have different procedures for entering and executing database queries, but I presume that if you have your own environment you already know how to use it. You'll also need a plain text editor. This is different than a word processor. A word processor is designed for writing documents and includes a lot of formatting information along with the text.

That formatting information will actually interfere with the SQL code in the example files, so. A word processor will not work for this purpose. Unfortunately, both the Notepad program that ships with Windows and the Text Edit program that ships with Mac OS 10, are not well suited for this purpose. For Windows I suggest Notepad ++. For Mac OS 10 I suggest Text Wrangler, these are both excellent text editors and they are both free. In the rest of this chapter, I'll show you how to install and configure this testing environment on both Windows and Mac computers.

It's a fairly simple process but it does require a few details. So I've split it up into three movies. If you're using a Windows based computer, you'll want to watch installing XAMMP on Windows, setting up MySQL users, and installing SID on WIndows. If you're using a Mac with OS10 you'll want to watch these movies. Installing XAMMP on a Mac, setting up MySQL users, and installing SID on a Mac. So let's get started installing the test environment.