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Sunday, June 17, 2007

Advantages of MySQL

MySQL has some advantages and disadvantages when compared to other databases. Let's take a look at some of them:

MySQL is fast, very reliable, and easy to use. Other SQL servers are often fast and very reliable, but not very easy to use or configure. Some others are very easy to use, but neither fast nor reliable. MySQL has all these three qualities. It is also lightweight. The binary package of MySQL for Windows is only 12 MB. For comparison, Microsoft SQL Server weighs in at around 300 MB.
MySQL is the server of choice when used with the PHP language. PHP provides a very strong support for MySQL, and due to its huge user base has been widely and thoroughly tested. Many web-hosting companies provide MySQL and PHP as a standard package.
MySQL is open source. This means that you can have the sourcecode of MySQL and you are free to change it according to your needs. Hopefully, you won't need to, but the power of having MySQL open source is that if you did need to, it is very helpful to have the sourcecode to fit the server to your specific needs.
There is a very large user base for MySQL and there are a lot of online communities focused on development and help. This means that if you have problems, there are plenty of people to ask for advice. This community has also created a number of third-party tools to help you get the job done. You will find some links to these tools at the end of this chapter.
The biggest advantage of MySQL is that it is free. There are some cases where MySQL is not free, but for our goal, which is web application development, it is. For a free program, MySQL has a lot of advanced features like replication and a transactional system. It also runs on many platforms; you can run MySQL on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, and many others.

Disadvantages of MySQL

MySQL is not perfect. Its main disadvantage is that it lacks some of the more advanced features found on commercial database systems, which are also found on some of the other free database systems, like PostgreSQL.

Where To Get MySQL

MySQL can be obtained from many web sites and FTP servers. However, the official homepage for MySQL is http://www.mysql.com. Here you will be able to choose your operating system, choose the closest mirror to you, and choose between an HTTP or FTP transfer when you download.
On MySQL.com you will find a number of files available for download:

MySQL is the most commonly used version of MySQL. It has no transaction system. All others features are included.
MySQL Max is almost the same as the MySQL package, except that this one supports transactions.
MySQL 4.0 is a development version of MySQL. It is not intended for a production environment, but is at your disposal for testing the new features.
MySQL GUI and MyCC are graphical clients for administering a MySQL server.

There are many good products available to download for use with MySQL, we will review some of them at the end of the chapter.

posted by Berry B. Wijaya @ 9:24 AM

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