MySQL Development

MySQL is a hugely popular Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) that has over 11 million installations in its name. MySQL provides a multi-user access to multiple databases, acting as the parent server. The Swedish firm MySQL AB has been the owner and official sponsor of this RDBMS, though the Californian firm Sun Microsystems has acquired it recently in 2008.

MySQL has been a popular database component for variant web applications such as the LAMP, BAMP, WAMP, and MAMP platforms. It also delivers as the database constituent of open source tools used for bug tracking such as Bugzilla and BitTorrent trackers. Written in C and C++, it is valid to work on almost all of the system platforms, making them popular and essential both.

MySQL’s advent up the popularity charts has been related to the contemporary popularity of scripting languages such as PHP and web application frameworks such as RoR (Ruby on Rails). For a number of content management systems like Joomla! And WordPress, PHP and MySQL are pitted together to perform. Same goes for the massively popular Wikipedia, where MySQL has been used as the database component and is written in PHP.

Some of the unique features implemented by the MySQL are listed below:

Storage Engine Features –
Provides more than one storage engines that allow you to choose the one that provides optimum output.
Allows the developer to choose from a host of native storage engines such as MyISAM, Falcon, Federated, CSV, Blackhole, and a number of others.
Community developed engines
Partner developed storage engines (InnoDB, StorageDB, NitroDB, etc.)
Custom storage engines
Community Grouping Features –
This allows you to gather transactions from various connections and hence increase the commits/second.

The current version of MySQL that is in use in web applications around the globe is 5.0 beta, released in March 2005. A future appendage to the current version is MySQL 5.1, which is in the pre-production stage since November 2005 and is due to be released soon.

The vast expanse of usage and simultaneous popularity has made MySQL an indispensable component for any database component requirement for web applications around the world.