The MySQL Forum

Every now and again I browse the MySQL forums, it's a great way to help others, hone your own skills and also to learn something new. It's also a great inspiration for this blog, many of the topics I mention are directly related to message I see posted. I don't refer to messages directly as I wouldn't want to point out peoples mistakes publicly, which is often the reason behind a blog entry, I see a lot of the same sort of problems or assumptions and so write about it here to try and spread the knowledge around a bit.

Making mistakes or assumptions is never something to be ashamed of, as you well know I make them all the time, it's obvious people are coming to MySQL from other databases and trying to do things the same way they have in the past. Rather than worry about them we should embrace them, use them as a method for learning. The hard part comes in actually asking for help, it can often be a little difficult asking other people to look at your code, we want people to help with the immediate problem but we don't want to expose our code to the eyes of others.

But if you do need help with a MySQL related problem, be it installation, simply SQL or stored procedures do checkout the MySQL forums, http://forums.mysql.com/. But don't let that be your only reason for visiting, get involved, have a go at answering questions yourself.

I for example know a fair amount about stored procedures but I know very little about performance issues. So I visit the performance forum from time to time to see the sort of thing people are asking about, this gives me a chance to look at things I might never have seen before.

So give it a go, get involved.