Your primary key should only be a number which exists for the sole purpose of being a constant and unique ID number. What if you want to change names?

Set the primary key to auto_incriment, every time you insert a row the ID will go up one. Here is a table I used in a recent project.

[code]
CREATE TABLE `users` (
`id` int(9) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`username` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
`mail` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
`pass` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
`rank` int(1) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;
[/quote]

Create that table in your database and insert a few rows.

Just dummy values, its considered geeky (partially in jest). I just use them because I don't want to spend any time thinking over meaningless values.

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Actually, SOCK, when I create a table over another table I get an error saying there is already a table.

I also don't see the need for data types that are so peculiar... Saving space really isn't a problem in today's world.

Thank you for your help.

What is this engine=myisam?
wouldn't you want your default charset to be utf-8?

Short version: Internal stuff, complicated. Just use myisam
Long version: The engine is how the database internally stores things. Each MyISAM table is stored on disk in three files. The files have names that begin with the table name and have an extension to indicate the file type. An .frm file stores the table format. The data file has an .MYD (MYData) extension. The index file has an .MYI (MYIndex) extension. For more on the engines, go here MySQL AB :: MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual :: 12 Storage Engines

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Yes, this is why I suggest using IF NOT EXISTS in your CREATE TABLE statement.

No offense, but you don't plan on having many records in your database then, or want your application to work efficiently.

As VillageIdiot stated, it's the table type, whether InnoDB, MyISAM, HEAP, etc. Used to be MyISAM was the default table type, but has been replaced by InnoDB on most installations. Either one of these will serve you fine, but I prefer to use MyISAM on 'regular' tables I don't need any special constraints on. Thus I specify the table/engine type for each table.

As to the character set, if you want it set to UTF-8, that's fine. Please be aware, the default character set is usually latin1_swedish_ci, even if the server is set to UTF-8.

MySQL Manual : Character set support

Once you select the information from the database.... I get the

SELECT * FROM....


but how do you output that information?