MySQL

Open source multi-platform SQL compatible, multi user database. Although it lacks strong transaction and data integrity capabilities and despite long standing corruption problems with Unicode and other codepages larger than 256 characters it has become a de-facto standard for database use on the web.

Has been forked by one of the original authors into a product called MariaDB.

Versions

 * 5.0.67 (2008-08-09)
 * MySQL 5.1.72 - Sep 2013
 * 5.1.73 (2013-12-03) - end of support


 * 8.0.13 (2018-10-22)

Administrative tools and utilities

 * phpMyAdmin - Administration over WWW - Requires PHP - Open source
 * REXX/SQL - SQL access for REXX - Open source

Text editor support

 * FTE
 * jEdit - Java based editor - MySQL syntax highlighting built in

License

 * Available in both commercial version and open source version known as the "community edition" that is licensed under the GPL v2.

Alternatives

 * Postgresql - Also open source and multi-platform, much stronger transaction and data integrity capabilities.
 * SQLite - If your database is primarily for web use and only does limited writing to file, i.e. primarily handles database reads, this can be much faster and takes up considerably less resources. Can be run from a memory based disk if dataset is small.

Authors

 * Antony T. Curtis (Worked on early OS/2 ports and was later a part of the MySQL dev team)

Publications

 * Paul DuBois: MySQL Cookbook - O'Reilly 2005, ISBN 059652708X

Links

 * MySQL homepage