What is MySQL?

MySQL is world’s most used open source relational database management system. MySQL database server is very fast and easy to use. It is developed in C and C++ and SQL parser is written in yacc. MySQL is platform independent, it works on most commonly used platforms. It is fully multi-threaded and works on most of the different compilers. MySQL works in embedded system. APIs for different languages like C, C++, Java, PHP, Python etc. are also available in MySQL.

MySQL source code is avialable in terms of GNU General Purpose License. MySQL is currently owned my ORACLE Corporation. MySQL is most commonly used in web applications. MySQL support different storage engines like MyISAM, InnoDB, Merge, Memory, Cluster etc., but mostly MyISAM is used for high speed and InnoDB for transactions and database integrity.

General Features

MySQL supports most common database features like:

• Stored procedures
• Triggers
• Cursors
• Information Schema
• Transactions, cluster storage etc. in InnoDB
• Nested Queries(Sub-queries)
• Caching of queries
• Cross platform support
• Full text indexing

MySQL Data Types

MySQL supports data types like:

• Numeric(signed and unsigned) – Tinyint, Int, Smallint, Mediumint, Bigint, Float, Decimal, Double, Real.
• String – Char, Varchar, Tinytext, Text, Mediumtext, Longtext, Binary, Varbinary, Tinyblob, Mediumblob, Blob, Longblob, Enum.
• Date & Time – Date, Datetime, Timestamp.