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Get it Done with MySQL 5&6

Get it Done with MySQL 5&6. By Peter Brawley and Arthur Fuller. Self-published, 2009. Page count: about 615 pages. I asked the authors for a print edition to review, but it is also available as an e-book.

The right word to describe this book falls somewhere between “tome” and “lunker.” You could beat back an unwelcome salesperson with it. You could also beat back any number of stubborn database problems. It’s kind of like a MySQL Manual plus a ton of practical how-to-use-MySQL information.

This is an unusual book in that it is useful for a very broad audience. I’d say you can get a lot out of it if you are a) new to databases b) new to MySQL c) in need of reference material d) looking for practical examples of installing or using MySQL e) trying to figure out how to design and optimize queries for MySQL f) trying to hook MySQL up to a popular programming language including PHP, Perl, Java, .NET, or C g) administering MySQL h) working with complex queries such as graphs or date and time queries i) using MySQL together with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Wow.

The material is generally timely, relevant, and correct. It’s also well organized and quite complete. There are cases where an extra-deep level of detail is lacking, but there’s certainly enough for a moderate to advanced user in most topics, and lots of topics go extra-deep.

On the minus side, the book is a bit hard to read at times due to a crowded layout. The table of contents is hard to scan because it doesn’t use the traditional outline format. The margins are small and the headings are bulky and intrusive. There aren’t many illustrations, and those aren’t great quality. Tables are inconsistently formatted. The index is not very comprehensive. The binding and printing, however, looks great. (Not at all like the MySQL Cluster certification guide, which looked like it’d been printed on recycled newsprint.)

So in general, I’m complimenting the content and criticizing the typesetting. Overall, it’s a great one-stop-shop for MySQL knowledge. I think this is a very good value in comparison to books from traditional publishers targeted at the same types of users, especially since you can buy the e-book and get free updates, which are frequently released.

Cacti Network Monitoring

Cacti 0.8 Network Monitoring, Dinangkur Kundu and S. M. Ibrahim Lavlu, Packt, 2009. Page count: 110 pages. (Here’s a link to the publisher’s site.)

This is a quite short book that covers some of the breadth but very little of the depth of Cacti. For example, it focuses on Cacti as an SNMP tool for graphing network data, but SNMP is only one of the many ways Cacti can collect data, and of course it graphs anything, not just networks. Each chapter takes the reader through the most important topics, with some code listings and screenshots. On the plus side, this makes it very easy to read quickly, because it doesn’t go off on many tangents about special cases and errors.

I don’t want to criticize too much, but I think I should give a summary of the major shortcomings. First, the book is just too small, especially for the price. It is also not very well edited; it seems to have been edited by non-English speakers. Finally, it constantly refers to Cacti as a monitoring tool, even talking about the need to find out about crashed equipment and so on — but it doesn’t clearly say that Cacti is only for performance graphing, not for monitoring and alerting. I wish they had not flung the word “monitoring” around so casually.

In terms of topics, it has an overview, installation, creating graphs, creating templates, managing users, SNMP, data queries, and basic administration. The strongest point is the explanation of SNMP. The other chapters have a lot of needless information and screenshots. The installation chapter, for example, goes through installing prerequisites from APT — which APT can do itself.

In the end it’s light reading that shouldn’t take you long to finish — an overview in case you don’t know much about Cacti.

Pentaho Solutions

Pentaho Solutions, Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing with Pentaho and MySQL. By Roland Bouman and Jos van Dongen, Wiley 2009. Page count: about 570 pages. (Here’s a link to the publisher’s site.)

The book is big in part because it’s about a GUI tool, so there are the requisite number of screenshots (but not too many). It is structured into four parts, each on a different topic.

The first part is 4 chapters on getting started with Pentaho: from a quick-start through installing, configuring, and understanding the Pentaho BI Stack. Pentaho is a complex suite of tools, and there’s a handy architecture diagram to help you grok what the parts are and how they fit together. You’ll learn about topics such as Mondrian and configuring the database connection pool.

The second part is a primer on dimensional modeling and DW design. It uses a sample database that the authors developed for the book, which you can download from the publisher’s website. You’ll learn about star schemas and data marts. You can skip this part if you’re familiar with BI concepts in general, and just want to learn how Pentaho implements them.

Part three is about Pentaho data integration. The first chapter is a primer on integration, which again you’ll be able to skip if you know your stuff. Then you’ll walk through topics such as generating dimensions, designing, and deploying data integration solutions with Kettle and Spoon.

Part four is about designing and building BI applications with Pentaho: learning about its metadata layer; using the reporting tools; scheduling, subscriptions, and bursting; OLAP; data mining; and building dashboards. This is about half the book, really. There’s a lot to it — it’s all about how to take a generic and flexible suite of tools and get something specific and useful out of it. If you’ve ever done that, you’ll know why this could occupy half a book. This isn’t a simple suite of tools that only does one thing well.

In the end, this is a good beginner-to-intermediate book for people who want to learn about data warehousing, business intelligence, Pentaho, or all of the above. If you don’t know anything about these topics, you’ll find the entire book quite useful. If you know a lot about BI and DW, you’ll probably get the most out of the Pentaho-specific bits. On the other hand, people who already have an advanced level of proficiency with Pentaho will probably know much of what’s in this book. Those seeking to build advanced solutions presumably also know a lot about the general BI concepts, too. So this is probably not the book for you if you already know what you’re doing with Pentaho.

Proprietary BI systems cost at least an arm and a leg, and possibly more. That’s why open-source BI is such a hot topic. If you’re looking to get acquainted with Pentaho, I think this is an excellent book — that’s what I got it for, and I wasn’t disappointed. Now if only I could find a similar book for Jaspersoft.