MySQL

MySQL is a very fast, multi-threaded, multi-user and robust SQL (Structured Query Language) relational database server. MySQL is free software: it is licensed under the GNU General Public License. It was written and is maintained by the Swedish company MySQL AB, which sells support and service contracts as well as commercially licensed copies of MySQL and employs people all over the world who communicate over the internet. MySQL AB was set up by two Swedes and a Finn: David Axmark, Allan Larsson and Michael "Monty" Widenius

MySQL originally lacked support for transactions, however this feature is now available. The full ANSI SQL[?] standard is extended in some areas and not implemented in others; probably the most often requested features which are not yet implemented are:

• "Sub-SELECTs" or "nested SELECTs". The MySQL website states that "Subselects are currently being implemented in the 4.1 development tree."
• multibyte character encoding or Unicode/UTF-8

MySQL is open source and works on many different platforms including AIX, BSDi[?], DEC Unix[?], FreeBSD, HP-UX, Linux, Mac OS X, NetBSD, OpenBSD, OS/2 Warp, SGI Irix, Solaris, SunOS, SCO OpenServer, SCO UnixWare, Tru64 Unix[?], Windows 95, 98, NT and 2000.

MySQL databases can be accessed using the programming languages C, C++, Eiffel, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, and Tcl; for each of these, a specific API is available. An ODBC interface called MyODBC is also available.

A development version of MySQL 4.1, containing support for "Sub-SELECTs" was released in January 2003.

Despite the official pronunciation of SQL being "sequel", the common pronunciation of MySQL is "My S-Q-L", and not "My-Sequel".

In August 2001, a test version of the Wikipedia software using PHP and MySQL appeared; in January 2002 it was adopted as the new software running Wikipedia. See the Wikipedia PHP script page.

External links: MySQL web site at http://www.mysql.com