What is MySQL?

1909
What is MySQL


Every small or big organization has some information which it needs to store for reference or use, this information is called data. The data can be information about the organization like number of products manufactured, features of products, employees working on a particular project, number of ongoing projects, total number of employees and their information, list of customers etc. All this information needs to be stored, the place where the data or information is stored is called database.  It is important to understand that whenever this data is required one should be able to retrieve the required information from this database and also update, add, delete and modify the records in the database.

For this we need to manage this data, this is called database management system (DBMS) and Relational database management system (RDBMS). The DBMS stores data in files while RDBMS uses primary key and foreign keys to store data in tabular form which makes it more convenient to access and modify the database, so RDBMS is usually preferred over DBMS.

Relational database is a system which establishes relationship between different databases.  MySQL is a reliable and well known relational database management system to handle and store huge data.

Also read – What is database management system?

Introduction of MySQL

MySQL AB, now known as Oracle Corporation, a Swedish company has marketed and supported MySQL. It was developed by Michael Widenius and David Axmark in the year 1994 for developing web-based software applications. MYSQL is an open source RDBMS which is free, fast and easy-to-use database management system for all big and small businesses. MySQL was released with open-source license. So it is free and we don’t need to pay for it. It is simple, easy and a powerful RDBMS package which can handles many functions of the most costly and powerful database packages. It uses Structured Query Language (SQL) data language and is very quick with very big data sets. MySQL is compatible with many operating systems and can be implemented using many languages like C/C++, PHP, JAVA, PERL etc.

The best thing is that MySQL is free to download and use.

MySQL Data Types

 The various data types which are used by MySQL are:

  1. Numeric – The numeric data type contains integers of different sizes, floating-point (real) data types.
  2. Character-string – Character string supports various data types of fixed or variable lengths. This data type also supports variable-length string called CHARACTER LARGE OBJECT (CLOB) this is used to identify columns that have large text values.
  3. Boolean – This data type has Yes or No values.
  4. Date & Time – The DATE data type includes Year, Month and Day in the format YYYY-MM-DD. Similarly, the components of TIME data type are HOUR, MINUTE, and SECOND in the format HH:MM: SS.
  5. Timestamp & Interval – The TIMESTAMP data type consists of at least six positions, for decimal fractions of seconds, along with an optional WITH TIME ZONE qualifier with the TIME and DATE fields. Whereas the INTERVAL data type presents a relative value which is used to increase or decrease an absolute value of a time, date, or timestamp.

Also read – Array and linked list data structure

 Features of MySQL

MySQL server has multi-layered architecture and independent modules. The design of MySQL server is also multi-layered with independent modules. Now let us discuss some of the features of MySQL:

  • Management – It is very easy to download MySQL. To schedule tasks automatically MySQL has event scheduler.
  • Performance – MySQL also extends fast load capacities with varied memory caches and table index partitioning.
  • Transactional Support – MySQL is available with support for multiple versions. MySQL has the ACID property that means features like Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability are taken care off in MySQL.
  •  Application Development – MySQL provides plug-in libraries to place the database into any application. For application development, MySQL also provides support to store procedures, triggers, functions, views and many more.
  • Cost Of Ownership – since it s free open sourced so total cost of licensing and hardware expenditures is reduced.
  • Open Source & 24 * 7 Support –  MySQL can be used on any platform while offering 24*7 support for open source edition and enterprise edition.
  • Scalability & Flexibility – MySQL is highly scalable and flexible.

The Bottom Line

Database contains very important and critical information of a business or any enterprise. So, database management is backbone of all size businesses. MySQL is a relational database management system which provides solution for managing database.

Here we have introduced what MySQL is and its functions. If you want to add something to this information, please write it in the comment box below.

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