XAMPP phpmyadmin mysql user manual?

Question

This is actually 2 questions... Background: After using the command line in MySQL for my database introductory classes (very enjoyable), I had been required to use a DBA tool and downloaded XAMPP as identified below. The transition to a GUI would be ok if I understood the interface for creating database tables... Q1.I have searched the net and Amazon trying to locate a user manual for XAMPP... does anyone have an actual manual? At this point it is trial and error.

Q2. As a student I am curious about the use of these tools in the real world... why not use the command line provided in MySQL?

XAMPP for Windows 1.7.3, 2009/12/23 Version Size Content XAMPP Windows 1.7.3 [Basic package] Apache 2.2.14 (IPv6 enabled), MySQL 5.1.41 + PBXT engine, PHP 5.3.1, OpenSSL 0.9.8l, phpMyAdmin 3.2.4, XAMPP Control Panel 2.5.8, XAMPP CLI Bundle 1.6, Webalizer 2.21-02, Mercury Mail Transport System v4.72, msmtp 1.4.19, FileZilla FTP Server 0.9.33, SQLite 2.8.17, SQLite 3.6.20, ADOdb 5.10, eAccelerator 0.9.6-rc1, Xdebug 2.0.6-dev, Ming 0.4.3 For Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7. See README

EXE 51 MB Self-extracting RAR archive MD5 checksum: 3635a1c0baf15e8a019009e6c1225389

Thank You for your interest!

Answer 1

Xampp is just a collection of other tools... the sql tool, phpMyAdmin, has it's own manual.

http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/docs.php

As for why to use xampp, it's meant for simplicity. If you were going to use ALL of the tools in the package (web server, database, php interpreter, etc, etc) it would take a considerable amount of time and effort to install and configure. xampp does everything for you. I don't use xampp, myself.