Those of you who are working on your Web host’s MySQL server have probably already been assigned a database with which to work. Sit tight, we’ll get back to you in a moment. Those of you running a MySQL server that you installed yourselves will need to create your own database. It’s just as easy to create a database as it is to delete one:
mysql>CREATE DATABASE jokes;
I chose to name the database jokes, because that fits with the example we’re using. Feel free to give the database any name you like, though. Those of you working on your Web host’s MySQL server will probably have no choice in what to name your database, since it will usually already have been created for you.
Now that we have a database, we need to tell MySQL that we want to use it. Again, the command isn’t too hard to remember:
mysql>USE jokes;
You’re now ready to use your database. Since a database is empty until you add some tables to it, our first order of business will be to create a table that will hold our jokes.