If you’ve had even the slightest bit of experience with rational databases, you’ve probably encounter the word MySQL: It’s a high-performance, multiuser relational database management system that is today the de facto standard for database-driven software applications, both on and off the Web.
Designed around three fundamental
principles---speed, stability, and ease of use---and freely available under the
GNU General Public License, MySQL has
been dubbed “the world’s most popular open-source database” by its parent
company MySQL AB and with good reason. Official statistics reveal over five
million sites are creating, using, and deploying MySQL-based application, with
more coming into the fold on a daily basis. You may even have heard of some of
MySQL’s customers: do the names Yahoo!, Google, Cisco, NASA and HP sound
familiar?