Introduction to MYSQL

Introduction to MYSQL

About MYSQL

MySQL is an open source relational database management system. Its name is a combination of “My” the name of the founder Monty Widenius’s daughter and “SQL”. A clear definition of database and SQL is mandatory to understand MySQL. In simple, a database is defined as the structured collection of data. Ex. Photo gallery is a database which has collection of photos (data). SQL - structured query language is not a database. It is a standardized language used to access the database and the data’s are processed to turn into efficient information. The SQL standard always refers to the current version and the current version is 2003. MySQL is open source software that allows managing relational databases. It also provides the flexibility of changing the source code as per the needs. It runs on multiple platforms like Windows, Linux and is scalable, reliable and fast.

2. Overview of Web Database

Many databases are in existence to meet out the needs of the application. These databases are broadly divided into Heavy and Light databases.

Heavy databases support all the desktop applications whereas the web applications are supported by Light databases. Below are the lists of commonly used databases.

• DB2

• MySQL

• Oracle

• PostgreSQL

• SQLite

• SQL Server

• Sybase

Due to the rapid growth in the web domain, most of the desktop applications are being converted into web applications. These transformations to the web results in the availability of many web applications in the network. Heavy databases did not meet out the network issues efficiently. Light databases were able to handle all the issues raised by the network. So all the light databases that supports the web applications are also known as Web Databases. See Figure 3.13