As defined before, schemas or databases— in MySQL, they are synonyms—are collections of tables with a common context, usually belonging to the same application. Actually, there are no restrictions around this, and you could have several schemas belonging to the same application if needed. However, for small web applications, as it is our case, we will have just one schema.

Your server probably already has some schemas. They usually contain the metadata needed for MySQL in order to operate, and we highly recommend that you do not modify them. Instead, let's just create our own schema. Schemas are quite simple elements, and they only have a mandatory name and an optional charset. The name identifies the schema, and the charset defines which type of codification or "alphabet" the strings should follow. As the default charset is latin1, if you do not need to change it, you do not need to specify it.

Use CREATE SCHEMA followed by the name of the schema in order to create the schema that we will use for our bookstore. The name has to be representative, so let's name it bookstore. Remember to end your line with a semicolon. Take a look at the following:

mysql> CREATE SCHEMA bookstore;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

If you need to remember how a schema was created, you can use SHOW CREATE SCHEMA to see its description, as follows:

mysql> SHOW CREATE SCHEMA bookstore \G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
       Database: bookstore
Create Database: CREATE DATABASE `bookstore` /*!40100 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET latin1 */
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

As you can see, we ended the query with \G instead of a semicolon. This tells the client to format the response in a different way than the semicolon does. When using a command of the SHOW CREATE family, we recommend that you end it with \G to get a better understanding.

All data must belong to a schema. There cannot be data floating around outside all schemas. This way, you cannot do anything unless you specify the schema you want to use. In order to do this, just after starting your client, use the USE keyword followed by the name of the schema. Optionally, you could tell the client which schema to use when connecting to it, as follows:

mysql> USE bookstore;
Database changed

If you do not remember what the name of your schema is or want to check which other schemas are in your server, you can run the SHOW SCHEMAS; command to get a list of them, as follows:

mysql> SHOW SCHEMAS;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| bookstore          |
| mysql              |
| test               |
+--------------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)