I am a ColdFusion developer and I usually use Access for my database and the IT people will convert it to a MySQL database. Then they will stop by my office and link my Access to the database.

Now I have this friend who has an Excel spreadsheet uploaded to the website every so often and he would like this changed. So I said I can do it using CF. Currently he's using a Linux hosting so he'll need to switch over. I looked at reviews and hosting companies and there are many CF but with only MySQL. How hard is it to create the tables in MySQL?

I work a lot with Open Source software but the tables get automatically created. Do I need to do a lot of setting up when creating the tables in MySQL? Access to me is easy, you set up the fieldnames and you're done. Then I just go into my CF admin site and link the database to the site I'm working on.

Need advice. Thanks!

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I looked at reviews and hosting companies and there are many CF but with only MySQL. How hard is it to create the tables in MySQL?

I work a lot with Open Source software but the tables get automatically created. Do I need to do a lot of setting up when creating the tables in MySQL? Access to me is easy, you set up the fieldnames and you're done. Then I just go into my CF admin site and link the database to the site I'm working on.

Need advice. Thanks!

You must look at the wrong reviews - look around on this site under Shared hosting offers - most of them use linux which means MySQL is available.

If you want to use Mysql, do you write PHP language? it is not just about setting Mysql but also about writing the code to retrieve the info in the database.

I do some but not as well as CF. I feel really good with CF but somewhat shady on the PHP. I have a PHP and MySQL book Web Development. It has some good info and it doesn't seem too difficult on the coding part but really not sure on creating the MySQL tables. All I need is a page to output the data from the database. Then they need to update or add to it and the person I'm helping is a network/hardware guy so he can do that but he's never created tables in MySQL either so no help there.

Most web hosts have phpmyhadmin, which is a menu driven system for creating sql, including defining tables. It is easy to use if you understand relational tables, indexes, etc.

Since MySQL is just another database system, if you know SQL and know how to create tables in one, you can use SQL to create tables in MySQL. Any programming language will just use the MySQL client libraries to call the various functions in MySQL.

With phpMyAdmin, creating tables in MySQL isn't much different than creating them in Access. You just need to know the field names and data types, but make sure to read the MySQL documentation because they're named differently than in Access (e.g. "text" is "varchar" and "memo" is "text").

Friday I created a MySQL database. I was going to create a script to connect to the database and an output but haven't had a chance to so we'll see.

I guess the table creation isn't so bad using PHPmyAdmin. It's just the many options kind of intimidated me. But after reading PHP and MySQL for dummies (yeah, yeah, you can laugh) I think I got the database set up right. The only thing I can't figure out is how to make the primaryID auto increment in PHPmyAdmin. Oh well, guess got to tinker around with PHPmyAdmin more.

I think I have a lot to learn :/ Learned CF myself, guess I can eventually do this too. Thanks for all the help!

On the screen where you define the fields for a table, in the column labeled extra, there is a dropdown which contains the option to define a field as auto_increment.

Or, in SQL-speak:

CREATE TABLE `foo` (`id` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY, `bar` CHAR(3));

I am a ColdFusion developer and I usually use Access for my database and the IT people will convert it to a MySQL database. Then they will stop by my office and link my Access to the database.

There's a program called Access to Mysql that works great for what (I think I understand) you're trying to do. I've got this program on a windows server and every night it recreats the contents of a local Access database on a remote MySQL server. It works great!

Ryan's post reminded me that OpenOffice's Base (available in 2.0 iirc) makes a great Access-like front end to MySQL (and tons of other databases, including Acess itself) and it might just be what you need.