MySQL Server

MySQL is a multithreaded, multi-user SQL database management system (DBMS) which has, according to MySQL AB, more than 10 million installations.

MySQL is owned and sponsored by a single for-profit firm, the Swedish company MySQL AB, which holds the copyright to most of the codebase. This is similar to the JBoss model and how the Free Software Foundation handles copyright in its projects, and dissimilar to how the Apache project does it, where the software is developed by a public community and the copyright to the codebase is owned by its individual authors.

Uses

MySQL is popular for web applications and acts as the database component of the LAMP, MAMP, and WAMP platforms (Linux/Mac/Windows-Apache-MySQL-PHP/Perl/Python), and for open-source bug tracking tools like Bugzilla. Its popularity as a web application is closely tied to the popularity of PHP, which is often combined with MySQL. PHP and MySQL are essential components for running the popular WordPress blogging platform. Wikipedia runs on MediaWiki software, which also uses PHP and a MySQL database.

Platforms

MySQL works on many different platforms—including AIX, BSDi, FreeBSD, HP-UX, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, NetBSD, Novell NetWare, OpenBSD, OS/2 Warp, QNX, SGI IRIX, Solaris, SunOS, SCO OpenServer, SCO UnixWare, Tru64, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. A port of MySQL to OpenVMS is also available.

Distinguishing features

The following features are implemented by MySQL but not by some other RDBMSes:

* Multiple storage engines, allowing you to choose the one which is most effective for each table in the application (in MySQL 5.0, storage engines must be compiled in; in MySQL 5.1, storage engines can be dynamically loaded at run time):
* Native storage engines (MyISAM, Falcon, Merge, Memory (heap), Federated, Archive, CSV, Blackhole, Cluster)
* Partner-developed storage engines (InnoDB, solidDB, NitroEDB, BrightHouse)
* Community-developed storage engines
* Custom storage engines
* Commit grouping, gathering multiple transactions from multiple connections together to increase the number of commits per second.

Server compilation type

There are 3 types of MySQL Server Compilations:

* Standard: The MySQL-Standard binaries are recommended for most users, and include the InnoDB storage engine.
* Max: (not MaxDB, which is a cooperation with SAP AG) is mysqld-max Extended MySQL Server. The MySQL-Max binaries include additional features that may not have been as extensively tested or are not required for general usage.
* The MySQL-Debug binaries have been compiled with extra debug information, and are not intended for production use, because the included debugging code may cause reduced performance.

Beginning with MySQL 5.1, MySQL AB has stopped providing three different package variants. There will only be one MySQL server package, which includes a mysqld binary with all functionality and storage engines enabled. Instead of providing a separate debug package, a server binary with extended debugging information is also included in the standard package.

Business Benefits

* Reduces database licensing costs by over 90%
* Cuts system downtime by 60%
* Lowers hardware expenditure by 70%
* Reduces administration, engineering and support costs by up to 50%
* Delivers less complicated solutions that complement existing corporate database such as Oracle, IBM DB2, and Microsoft SQL Server