MySQL in a Nutshell [11]
The Windows Essential package is a file called MySQL-version.msi. From the Windows desktop, just double-click this file’s icon and the Windows Installer program will start.
The standard Windows installation package is a compressed file from which you have to extract the installation files. To do this, you need a utility such as WinZip (http://www.winzip.com) to uncompress the files. One of the files is named setup.exe. Double-click it to start the installer for this package. From this point, the installation process is pretty much the same for the packages that use the installer.
Once you’ve started the installer, a dialog box appears that offers you three general choices. The Typical choice is the recommended one, but it will omit the installation of C API include files and other client libraries. For the standard Windows package, this choice will also omit installation of the embedded server, the benchmark suite, and several other scripts. The Complete installation choice instructs the installer to install everything that’s included in the distribution package that you downloaded. The Custom choice allows you to choose from a list of programs and libraries to install. On the same screen is a button labeled Change that lets you change the directory in which MySQL will be installed. Older versions of MySQL use c:\mysql as the default. Recent versions install MySQL by default in directories like c:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server version\, where the word version is replaced with the version number.
After you choose what to install and where, the files are installed. When the installer is finished, the MySQL Server Instance Configuration Wizard is started. It asks you a series of questions to create a server configuration file (my.ini), which, by default, is stored in c:\windows. The questions are based on the intended usage of the MySQL server, and your answers determine the contents of the configuration file. You will also be allowed to change the default location of the datafiles, the TCP/IP port used, and a couple of other settings.
To invoke the command-line utilities without having to enter the file path to the directory containing them, enter the following from the command line:
PATH=%PATH%;c:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server version\bin
You should replace the word version with the version number—that is to say, you should enter the path to the MySQL installation. If you changed location when you installed MySQL, you need to use the path that you named. Older versions of Windows may not accept long directory names in the startup file. Therefore, you may need to abbreviate the line shown previously so that it looks something like this:
PATH=%PATH%;c:\Program~1\MySQL\MySQLS~1.1\bin
The characters ~1 are substitutes for the extra characters of a directory name that follow the first seven characters. An S is a substitute for any space that occurs in the first seven characters of a directory name. If the directory name ends in a dot and more characters, the last dot and characters are given. For example, a directory named “MySQL Server 4.1” would be entered as “MySQLS~1.1,” as shown in the previous command. To make this new path available at boot time, you may want to add it to the c:\autoexec.bat file.
Once you’ve finished installing MySQL and you’ve set up the configuration