Thursday, February 14, 2008

Exam Pointer Number 1

Do you know the difference between client programs and standalone programs?

The MySQL Certification exams have a series of questions about client programs spread among the six exams. The gist of the questions are that MySQL supplies some programs that need to connect to the mysqld server. These programs depend on having a running MySQL server with which to interact.

MySQL also supplies some programs that do not require a running server. The risk adverse would be wise to just shut down their database before using them. The myisamchk table-maintenance utility or myisampack MyIsam table compressor for examples. Read the documentation on myisamchk for the list of woes that can be befall the more adventurous.

Some of the questions on the exams are quite detailed on these various programs. But it is obvious that many candidates are not able to differentiate the two types of programs.

On one of of the exams, just over a third of the candidates could identify the difference between these two types of programs. That is a lot of people that could be damaging their data needlessly.

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