Summary
The most important directories in your MySQL installation are bin (executable programs), data (database data), and docs (documentation). The two programs you will use the most are mysqld, the MySQL server, and mysql, the command-line client. You have a choice of several user interfaces/client programs. We discussed mysql (command-line), MySQLCC (GUI), and phpMyAdmin (Web-based). The mysql command-line program has many useful command-line switches and options. We have discussed -u (to specify username), -p (to log in with a password), -h (to specify the host), and --i-am-a-dummy (for damage-control mode). When logged in, you can use SHOW DATABASES or SHOW TABLES to get a list of what is in the system and DESCRIBE tablename to get information about a particular table. You can log out with \q. You can terminate commands with ; or \g to send them to the server for execution. You can execute a file of commands from inside the client with source filename and from outside the client by using file redirection.
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