One of the most popular programming language and database engine
combinations for the Web is PHP with MySQL. This combination works well for
many reasons, but primarily because of the speed, stability, and simplicity
of both applications. The first part of this chapter provides a basic
tutorial on how to connect to and query MySQL with PHP. Following the
tutorial is a reference of PHP MySQL functions in alphabetical order. For
the examples in this chapter, I use the database of a fictitious computer
support business. This database contains one table with client work requests
(workreq) and another with client contact information
(clients).