| MySQL | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developed by | MySQL AB |
| Initial release | May 23, 1995 |
| Stable release | 5.0.67 (2008-08-04) [+/−] |
| Preview release | 5.1.26-rc (2008-07-14) [+/−] |
| Written in | C, C++ |
| OS | Cross-platform |
| Available in | English |
| Type | RDBMS |
| License | GNU General Public License (version 2) or proprietary EULA |
| Website | http://www.mysql.com/ |
MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS)[1] which has more than 11 million installations.[2] The program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases.
MySQL is owned and sponsored by a single for-profit firm, the Swedish company MySQL AB, now a subsidiary of Sun Microsystems,[3] which holds the copyright to most of the codebase. The project's source code is available under terms of the GNU General Public License, as well as under a variety of proprietary agreements.
"MySQL" is officially pronounced /maɪˌɛskjuːˈɛl/[4] (My S Q L), not "My sequel" /maɪˈsiːkwəl/. This adheres to the official ANSI pronunciation; SEQUEL was an earlier IBM database language, a predecessor to the SQL language.[5] The company does not take issue with the pronunciation "My sequel" or other local variations.
MySQL is written in C and C++. The SQL parser uses yacc and a home-brewed lexer.[6]
MySQL works on many different system platforms, including AIX, BSDi, FreeBSD, HP-UX, i5/OS, Linux, Mac OS X, NetBSD, Novell NetWare, OpenBSD, eComStation , OS/2 Warp, QNX, IRIX, Solaris, Symbian, SunOS, SCO OpenServer, SCO UnixWare, Sanos, Tru64, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. A port of MySQL to OpenVMS is also available.[7]
Libraries for accessing MySQL databases are available in all major programming languages with language-specific APIs. In addition, an ODBC interface called MyODBC allows additional programming languages that support the ODBC interface to communicate with a MySQL database, such as ASP or ColdFusion. The MySQL server and official libraries are mostly implemented in ANSI C/ANSI C++.
To administer MySQL databases one can use the included command-line tool (commands: mysql and mysqladmin). Also downloadable from the MySQL site are GUI administration tools: MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser. Both of the GUI tools are now included in one package called tools/5.0.html MySQL GUI Tools.
In addition to the above-mentioned tools developed by MySQL AB, there are several other commercial and non-commercial tools available. Examples include phpMyAdmin, a free Web-based administration interface implemented in PHP, Navicat Lite Edition, a free desktop based GUI tool.
