[nmglug] MySQL - Howto

[Tim Emerick]

I've been using MS Excel's Pivot Tables for years to analyze large chunks of data.  I'm getting to the point where my data is getting to be more lines than Excel can handle.  I'm thinking it's time to actually learn a DBMS and some SQL.  Of course I would like to go towards MySQL but it's a little intimidating.

Can anybody offer some books or websites that might offer some help?  I'm not sure where I want to end up but I know that I want to eventually keep a repository of approximately 470,000 records per year and be able to generate various reports.  Mind you, I'm not a programmer in any sense of the word.  Would love if I could use Excel Pivot Tables as the reporting tool with MySQL as the back end.

LAMP?  Ruby on Rails?  phpMyAdmin?  Something else?

Thanks!

Tim