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MySQL is a relational database management system. Lean, mean, clean, powerful, scalable and free, MySQL is the M in the LAMP quartet (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP). You'll find it lurking behind the scenes at Flickr, Facebook, Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, WordPress blogs, forums, eCommerce applications and content management systems. It's in use in virtually every situation where a website needs dynamic access to stored data.
A MySQL database is a collection of tables of logically organized information that can be queried and manipulated in a myriad of ways using a programming language -- in my case, PHP. For example, a simple table containing employee names might look like this:
| EmployeeID | LastName | FirstName | HireDate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1001 | Williams | Joseph | 01-14-2002 |
| 1002 | Smith | Mary | 09-08-1980 |
| 1003 | Adams | Barbara | 08-24-2001 |
| 1004 | Smith | Ignatius | 03-17-1999 |
The above table could be queried to return employee names in alphabetical order or in order by hire date. It could be queried to return a list of all employees named Smith, or all employees hired since 2001.
A typical scenario on the web is storage of user login information. A database table might contain usernames with their encrypted passwords. For example:
| UserID | Username | Password |
|---|---|---|
| 101 | happygolucky | 8Ykljsdf2389dhlkjIl |
| 102 | tomorrowiwill | 9qw3OIUJH23409KLks |
When a user attempts to log in, the database above could be queried to assure that the username/password combination matches user input.
MySQL was acquired by Sun Microsystems in January, 2008. Hopefully, this will mean good things, such as increased popularity and enhanced features.