Reddit mentions of MySQL (4th Edition)

I've studied for the 5.0 Developer cert, and the 5.6 Developer cert, and I've also mentored about 100 students through these exams. Most/all of the students were new to database development, so I had to teach them from zero to Oracle Certified in the space of about 10 weeks.

To echo what /u/justintxdave said, the 5.6 Developer exam is tough. A lot of the questions are deliberately obtuse in my opinion and seem designed to catch you out. Plus they have questions on Java talking to MySQL, PHP talking to MySQL and Microsoft .NET talking to MySQL. This seems a little unfair to me - if you're a PHP developer, you're unlikely to know .NET and vice-versa.

The 5.0 Certification Study Guide is still a good resource, but you need to be careful to identify those things that have changed from 5.0 to 5.6 - e.g. DATETIME, TIMESTAMP, SQL MODES, and there are topics in the new Developer exam that were in the old DBA exam - transactions, foreign key constraints etc. The sample questions on the DVD of 5.0 book are a good practice tool.

Here's the list of topics I studied for the 5.6 exam, and what books/resources I used.

Study Guide refers to the 5.0 Certification Study Guide , and the relevant chapter numbers.

Head First SQL is a very basic beginners guide to SQL that you probably don't need.

I also used Paul du Bois's MySQL Developer's Library to fill in some blanks.

There is was a real need for an official 5.6 Certification book, but at this stage an 8.0 cert is probably just around the corner. I always had a notion I might write a 5.6 book, but life got in the way :)

Best of luck with the exam!