Yes the first MySQL book will take you a long way and lay most of it out for you very nicely. The other books add on to the foundation that is given to you in

Yes the first MySQL book will take you a long way and lay most of it out for you very nicely. The other books add on to the foundation that is given to you in the first book. Part One gives a really good overview of writing queries for mysql, optimizing them, understanding all the data types etc. Part Two gives you the practical hand on that you need in multiple programming languages C, Perl, and PHP. Part Three teaches you administration and security which helps complete the circle of knowledge. As you don't want to be a developer that does not know how to talk the Database administrator language. As the more you know and learn the better you and others can help optimize and secure the different development, staging and production environments applications and hardware.