I’ve also assumed that you want to have full rights when executing these commands so I’ve used sudo, however you may not need this depending on your set up.

Finally if some other web site covers the command better or I’m feeling lazy I’ll just pop it in the links list at the bottom of this page.

Useful MySQL Commands

Starting MySQL Demon

Start your MySQL database and get it running as a background process:

sudo mysqld_safe
Ctrl + Z
bg

MySQL create databases script

Make a SQL script that creates 3 databases and assigns all rights to my username. Copy the following SQL and paste it into a file called create_databases.sql:

create database mydb_development;
create database mydb_test;
create database mydb_production;
grant all on mydb_development.* to 'my_username'@'localhost';
grant all on mydb_test.* to 'my_username'@'localhost';
grant all on mydb_production.* to 'my_username'@'localhost' identified by 'my_password';

MySQL drop databases script

Make a script to drop databases. Copy the following SQL and paste it into a file called drop_databases.sql:

drop database nemos_production;
drop database mydb_development;
drop database nemos_test;

Executing a script from MySQL

The above scripts can be executed from the command-line with the either of these commands:

sudo mysql < create_database.sql
or
sudo mysql < drop_database.sql

Showing MySQL databases

To check that the databases were created :

sudo mysqlshow
or
sudo mysql
show databases;

Displaying database tables

Displaying the tables of a database:

sudo mysqlshow mydb_development
or
sudo mysql
show tables from mydb_development;

Displaying details about a database table

Displaying details about a particular database table:

sudo mysqlshow mydb_development mytable

Droping a database table

Dropping a table from a database:

sudo mysql
use mydb_development;
drop table mytable;

Displaying information about a table

Displaying the fields and field metadata about a table:

show fields from my_table; 
or
desc my_table;

Useful Links

• http://openmaniak.com/mysql.php

These are just a few quick and simple MySQL commands that you will always use. Hope this helps.

One of my problems is that these scripts alter the database schema and I only want them to execute if the change hasn’t already been made.

One of these changes was to remove a column from the database, so my question is ‘how can I ask SQLServer whether a particular column exists’.

Well the SQL query to check if a column exists and execute a query if it does is as follows:

IF EXISTS ( SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
                 WHERE TABLE_NAME='my_table_name' AND
                 COLUMN_NAME='my_column_name' )
BEGIN
  PRINT 'Execute some query here'
END

Hope it is useful. Ben…