Retrieving Data The process of retrieving data once a connection has been made to the MySQL server is similar to the process of interacting with the data through the mysql client. The first thing that needs to be addressed is the database that holds the table (which in turn holds the data). Selecting a Database In the mysql client, a database is identified (or selected) by the USE <database> command. In PHP, this is accomplished with a PHP MySQL API function called mysql_select_db(). This function identifies the database that should be used for any subsequent requests to the data, which eliminates the need to qualify every table (or other MySQL resource) called with the database name. There are two ways to use this function: • mysql_select_db($db_name, $link_id) – Using the mysql_select_db function in this fashion ensures that the resource that initiated the connection to the MySQL server would be selected with the $link_id. The variable, that is identified here