MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS) based on SQL- Structured Query Language and is free and open source.MySQL was created by MySQL AB, a Swedish company in 1995 which was later acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008.
MySQL is easy to use and fast. It is one of the most famous open source databases and it is used with PHP or Perl scripts to create server-side applications. It can be used to store anything from a single record of information to an entire data of a hospital.MySQL is most commonly used as a web database. MySQL is written in C and C++ languages.
Some Interesting Facts About MySQL:
- The creation of MySQL was actually started in 1979, when Michael Widenius develoved a database tool called UNIREG for managing databases. Later on UNIREG has been modified and rewritten in many languages to handle big databases. After some time Michael Widenius contacted David Hughes, the author of mSQL, to see if Hughes would like connecting mSQL to UNIREG. That’s the way MySQL came in existence.
- MySQL is named after the daughter of Michael Widenius whose name is “My”.
- MySQL supports large databases, it can have up to 50 million rows or even more in a table. The default file size limit for a table is 4GB, but can be increased to a theoretical limit of 8 million terabytes (TB).
- MySQL is very poerfull and it supports many operating systems(LAMP) with many languages like PHP, PERL, C, C++, JAVA, etc.
- MySQL version less than 5.0 doesn’t support ROLE, COMMIT and stored procedure also there is no BACKUP DATABASE SQL command in MySQL Server 5.6.
- The dayofweek() is a MySQL date/time function. It gives the day of week in number.
- SQL is a computer language, on the other hand MySQL is a software or an application.
- In January 2010, when Oracle took over Sun Microsystems, Widenius forked the open-source MySQL project and created MariaDB due to its acquisition by Oracle Corporation. MariaDB is based on the same code base as MySQL server 5.5 and aims to maintain compatibility with Oracle-provided versions.
- MariaDB is named after Monty’s younger daughter Maria, in the same way as MySQL is named after his other daughter My.
- The maximum size of a row in a MySQL table is 65,535 bytes.