If you have read any Oracle SQL Manuals or books you may have come across the SOUNDEX function. The function returns a value based on the phonetic representation of a string you supplied, this can then be used to compare with another word which sounds the same.

Soundex is available in MySQL also and operates in exactly the same way.

mysql> select * from sound_test
       where soundex(word) = soundex('to');
+------+
| word |
+------+
| to   |
| too  |
+------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

However MySQL also offers a much easier way of using and remembering the functionality. All you need to do is use the words sounds like as the comparison to perform the same functionality.

mysql> select * from sound_test 
       where word sounds like 'to';
+------+
| word |
+------+
| to   |
| too  | …

Often when dealing with text in an SQL statements it's desirable to join two or more strings together. For example we might want to join a persons title and surname to produce a suitable heading for an address block.

This joining of words is called concatenation and in Oracle is achieved using the pipe character twice like so ||

 
SQL> select title||' '||surname from person;


TITLE||''||SURNAME
-----------------------------------------
Mr Miller

In MySQL concatenation is achieved using a function called concat. All we need to do is call the concat function from the SQL statement passing in the columns or text we wish to concatenate.

mysql> select concat(title,' ',surname) from person
+---------------------------+
| concat(title,' ',surname) |
+---------------------------+
| Mr Miller                 | …

it occurred to me that i mentioned the product engineer position, but there are a number of other jobs at mysql that are open, including web developer.

As with Oracle MySQL offers the ability to create a table based on the definition of another. This can be done in two ways, one which will be familiar to Oracle users and another which is only available in MySQL.

The first way is to use a select statement in the create table command like so.

mysql> create table emps2 as select * from emps;
Query OK, 3 rows affected (0.20 sec)
Records: 3  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

This creates a table with the same structure as the table we based the select statement on. We can add or remove columns from the table by explicitly specifying the column names in the select like so.

mysql> create table emps3 as select emp_id, emp_name from emps;
Query OK, 3 rows affected (0.13 sec)
Records: 3  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0


mysql> desc emps3;
+----------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| …

...seems some people are actually reading my Blog, it's difficult to know sometimes as there isn't the sort of statistics available for me to find out. However I have received a couple of emails about the blog over the last few days.

One thing I didn't realise is that to leave a comment you need a blogger account, I have changed the setting so you can now leave comments without having to sign up for an account.

I was also asked about a feed, this is available at

http://gilfster.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Welcome to new versions of XAMPP. In the last two weeks many people tested the beta versions of XAMPP and we are now proud to release new final versions of XAMPP for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. All three versions of XAMPP now contain updated versions of: MySQL (4.1.13), PHP (4.4.0), phpMyAdmin (2.6.3-pl1), OpenSSL (0.9.8), and Perl (5.8.7).

To find out more or get the downloads please visit the XAMPP project page

Mike Kruckenberg: Where’s the MySQL Podcast?
I couldn’t agree more, the PHP podcast I found the other day is very interesting, and very well done. I think a MySQL podcast, with MySQL engineers talking about the latest development, or just common support questions being discussed would be a great. Stories from the support frontlines, could be entertaining and educational.

MySQL Product Engineer This seems like a cool job to have, if you have the patience, and tenacity of a build engineer. CM is hard work, and I personally don’t have the patience/knowledge to deal with it, but if you think you have it. Go for it. I know quite a few people who work for MySQL, and I must say I am jealous of the working conditions.. (you telecommute, unless you’re a trainer). Checkout the other jobs available

There seems to be a podcast about everything under the sun, there's even a PHP podcast. Is there someone brewing a MySQL podcast out there? Not sure what kind of interest there might be, but I'd subscribe to hear periodic interviews with key folks in the community and to get an inside look at what's happening in development.

Just ideas . . .

Marc Delisle is one of the lead developers of the very popular phpMyAdmin project, a web/browser-based tool for MySQL Administration. I talked with him about MySQL, phpMyAdmin (of course), and being a developer in general.