PHP 5/MySQL Programming- P79:computer programming has often been seen as a difficult and arcane skill. Programming languages are difficult and complicated, out of the typical person’s reach. However, the advent of the World Wide Web has changed that to some extent. It’s reasonably easy to build and post a Web page for the entire world to see. The language of the Web is reasonably simple, and numerous applications are available to assist in the preparation of static pages | 368 PHP 5 MySQL Programming for the Absolute Beginner In the Real World Professional programmers often use expensive software tools to help build data diagrams but you don t need anything more than paper and pencil to draw ER figures. I do my best data design with a partner drawing on a white board. I like to talk through designs out loud and look at them in a large format. Once I ve got a sense of the design I usually use a vector-based drawing program to produce a more formal version of the diagram. This type of drawing tool is useful because it allows you to connect elements together already has the crow s feet lines available and allows you to move elements around without disrupting the lines between them. Dia is an excellent open-source program for drawing all kinds of diagrams. I used it to produce all the ER figures in this chapter. A copy of Dia is on the CD that accompanies this book. I also add plenty of sample data in the script. You don t want to work with actual data early on because you are guaranteed to mess up somewhere during the process. However it is a good idea to work with sample data that is a copied subset of the actual data. Your sample data should anticipate some of the anomalies that might occur in actual data. For example what if a person doesn t have a middle name My entire script for the spy database is available on the book s CD as . All SQL code fragments shown in the rest of this chapter come from that file and use the MySQL syntax. If you can t use MySQL or want to try an alternative check out appendix B for information on SQLite an intriguing alternative to MySQL. SQLite scripts and database files for all the database examples in the book are packaged on the CD that accompanies this book. Setting Up the System I began my SQL script with some comments that describe the database and a few design decisions I made when building the database builds and populates all databases for spy examples uses mysql - should
