MySQL Community Edition is an open source, cross-platform, widely used and very fast relational database management system (RDBMS). It features both client and server implementations, which consist of a server daemon (mysqld) and many different client programs and libraries.
Features at a glance
Originally created by Sun Microsystems (now maintained by Oracle), MySQL is more than just “the world’s most popular open source database” as it features connectors, replication, partitioning, workbench, enterprise monitor, dashboard, and advisors, query analyzer, replication monitor, and enterprise backup features. It runs on Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X and Windows operating systems.
In addition, the MySQL database server also provides you with full, incremental and partial backup functions, full and partial restore, point-in-time-recovery, external authentication, policy-based auditing compliance, thread pool, cluster manager, automatic scaling, as well as cluster geo-replication features.
Supports a wide range of storage engines
Among the storage engines supported by MySQL, we can mention MyISAM, InnoDB and NDB. Hot backup for InnoDB1 is also provided. The Community Edition is offered for free and actively maintained and supported by a community of open source enthusiasts and developers from all places of the world.
Supports all GNU/Linux distributions
MySQL has been engineered to run on Linux kernel-based operating systems, which means that it can be easily installed on any GNU/Linux distribution with minimum effort. It is available for download as pre-built binary packages for Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and any other Linux OS, supporting both 32-bit and 64-bit instruction set architectures.
Configurable through phpMyAdmin
MySQL is a server program, which means that it runs in the background, as a daemon. You can interact with it via the command-line, but the best way to manage the databases is to use a graphical user interface. The best MySQL front-end available today is without no doubt phpMyAdmin, which provides users with a web-based interface that can be access from virtually anywhere.
