MySQL: Exporting Data to Excel

So, your web site is all running nicely, and suddenly your boss wants a report on how many users in the database are aged between 30-35, or live in France, or visited in the last week. Of course, the site spec never had any reporting facility, and you'll be asked to produce custom SQL queries like this every time they have a marketing meeting to discuss leveraging synergies while thinking out of the box.

In this article, Allan shows you how to make the data easily exportable from a MySQL database into Excel, ready for Powerpoint loveliness, and then shows how you can bag up the code as a Dreamweaver Server Behavior for the next time the boss interrupts your game of Quake.

Beginner's SQL: How about a Date?

Today we will uncover the secrets to success using dates in SQL, secrets not at all difficult to understand, once you've seen them. In a way, they're like magic tricks. If you know how the tricks are done, they're not really magic, although they may still be delightful.

This article contains explanations, tips, and examples for several different database systems, but makes no attempt to be exhaustive. There's just not enough space or time. My intent is to give you the confidence to deal with your own date situations, by helping you understand how they all work.

MySQL Data Types

While I've been writing my tutorials for DMXzone, I've often been surprised at how many support queries I get from people who have difficulty because they're choosing the wrong datatype for their database columns. That's one of the negatives about Dreamweaver's power: it can insulate you from the nitty gritty of data too much sometimes. So, following several requests, I've put together a tutorial on the different ways to store data in MySQL. Even if you think you're an intermediate DW/ PHP developer, you might learn something ..  

SQLite 2: The Killer Features (and the sadly lacking)

As we saw last week, SQLite  is an SQL database engine that will be supported in PHP5 and which can be embedded directly into your applications. 

In this second tutorial, Allan looks at the killer features- temporary "in memory" databases and triggers which can "cascade" one change throughout the database, and looks at ways around the most important feature yet-to-be-implemented feature,  the lack of an ALTER TABLE function.

If you've ever despaired at not being able to include database functionality in your PHP pages because the machine you're using as a web server doesn't have MySQL installed, or if you ever need the features of the SQL language without having to connect to database servers, then this article is for you.

Beginner's SQL: Aggregates and Grouping

When you create a database-driven Web site, you will encounter a number of common data retrieval scenarios. Simple lists, header/detail listings, row difference calculations, and reports with subtotals can all be satisfied using fairly basic SELECT queries. But when you move on to functions that aggregate data - to find sums, averages, counts and the like, there's a few gotchas that can baffle the newbie and trip up even the experienced developer.

Wave goodbye to Aggregate and groupings gotcha misery with Rudy's easy-to-follow tutorial on some of SQL's powerful aggregating functions!