I’ve been putting together a quick reference guide to MySQL for some upcoming projects and thought that it was handy enough others might find it useful. When I went looking for some good references I was surprised to only find a handful of options and none of them alone had all the information I wanted at my fingertips. So, I figured, it would be worth it to spend the time to create my very own super-uber-ultimate MySQL reference. And now, I’m giving it to you… my lucky readers!

A Word of Caution Before You Download…

This is a reference, not an educational tool. Well, it can be educational, but only for those with a rounded understanding of MySQL. If you’re just beginning MySQL, you might have better luck starting with some of the tutorial sites out there. Once you have a working familiarity with the language and the tools I’m sure you’ll find this reference sheet will be really handy.

Designing

I tried to be a little more comprehensive than other references without trying to cram the entire behemoth that is the MySQL documentation. Instead, I tried to balance the useful bits that I know I like to use from the MySQL documentation (like the size references for the data types so I can make good decisions for designing optimized tables).

In listing the functions, I also wanted to capture as much of the syntax as I could as I sometimes get confused about the order of the arguments since I develop in so many different languages. It’s a lot of information that unfortunately gets visually overwhelming, but I found it’s too important to not include.

My original goal was to try and fit it all on a single page. Well, without microscopic type, that isn’t going to happen — at least not with amount of information I want on it. So, I expanded to a 2-page landscape layout that I figured could be printed on both sides of a single sheet and laminated.

Embedded Links

I took the extra time to embed direct links of each information box to the appropriate documentation page on MySQL’s site. It seemed like an extremely useful feature to me to be able to quickly jump to the right page in MySQL’s online documentation when I need to dig deeper on a specific function or data type. If you’re using this as an onscreen reference in Acrobat or Apple’s Preview, you might find it tricky to use click-and-drag scrolling without launching one of the links. Sorry in advance but I didn’t design the software, I just use it.

With that said, have at it! And please give me feedback on how useful (or unusable) it is to you. It’d be nice to know if other people are finding it helpful. Cheers!

Download MySQL Reference Sheet (136K, PDF)

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