Chapter 22: Setting Up a MySQL Database Server
In This Chapter
- Finding MySQL packages
- Configuring the MySQL server
- Working with MySQL databases
- Displaying MySQL databases
- Making changes to tables and records
- Adding and removing user access
- Checking and fixing databases
MySQL is a popular Structured Query Language (SQL) relational database server. Like other database servers that use SQL, MySQL provides the means to access and manage SQL databases. However, MySQL also provides tools for creating database structures, as well as for adding data to those structures, modifying the data, and removing the data from those structures. Because MySQL is a relational database, data can be stored and controlled in small, manageable tables. Those tables can be used in combination to create flexible, complex data structures.
MySQL provides one of the most-used databases on the Internet, and it is especially used to provide data for Web applications. Nearly all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide MySQL if they provide a database.
A Swedish company called MySQL AB was responsible for developing MySQL (www.mysql.com). MySQL AB released MySQL as an open-source product several years ago, gaining revenue by offering a variety of MySQL support packages, commercial licenses, and MySQL-branded franchise products. In February 2008, Sun Microsystems Inc. acquired MySQL AB for about $1 billion. (Who says you can’t make money with open-source software?) The following spring, Oracle acquired Sun and ...