MySQL: A Freebie DB That Runs Like the Expensive Brands
Open-source alternative is fast, lightweight, robust—and stacks up well against conventional DBs
By Steve Renaker
This is the second in a series of stories on free-of-charge, open-source databases, describing their various attributes and offering a comparison to more conventional products.
Today: MySQL 3.23.33
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In recent years, MySQL has become a very popular open-source alternative to traditional relational database management systems. Companies and developers who at one point might have laid out thousands of dollars for a Sybase or Oracle installation are instead going with MySQL for their database needs. The fact that it's freely available naturally contributes to its popularity, but MySQL has a lot more going for it than just the absence of a price tag—it's fast, lightweight, and very robust. In this article, I'll discuss some of MySQL's notable features, analyze how it stacks up against other open-source database systems, and demonstrate how to get started using it.
Database developers who are familiar with other SQL database systems won't find anything shockingly different about MySQL. The MySQL monitor looks very similar to the bare-bones interface of Oracle's SQL*Plus, and most of the ANSI-standard SQL commands will work. MySQL is available for platforms ranging from Windows to Solaris, but the new releases generally appear first for Linux with other ports following at varying intervals.
The MySQL vs. PostgreSQL comparison has been widely (and hotly) debated. For most developers (who don't care whether one or the other supports various obscure ODBC functions), the differences boil down to a few key issues. Even MySQL's most ardent followers can't deny that PostgreSQL is more technically sophisticated and fully featured. PostgreSQL has support for transactions, stored procedures, and triggers, which MySQL doesn't. On the other hand, MySQL is smaller and simpler, and in most situations it uses less memory. Reliable numbers are hard to come by, since they're both open-source, but it's generally accepted that MySQL is currently in considerably wider use than PostgreSQL, which can make it easier to get help from other users. Both systems have excellent online documentation at their respective websites, though I find the MySQL site somewhat easier to use.
