MySQL
The open-source relational database that powered the early web and still runs much of it.
MySQL is a relational database: it keeps data in tables with rows and columns, and you read and change it with SQL. It runs as a server program; your application connects to it over the network, by default on port 3306, sends queries and gets rows back.
It was created in Sweden in the mid-1990s by the company MySQL AB, and the name comes from My, the daughter of co-founder Michael Widenius. Free, fast to install and good enough for most websites, it became the M in the classic LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and the database behind WordPress, early Facebook and countless online shops.
Sun Microsystems bought MySQL AB in 2008, and Oracle got it when it bought Sun in 2010. Worried about its future under Oracle, Widenius started a fork called MariaDB, which stays largely compatible. Today MySQL is still open source under the GPL, with paid editions from Oracle, and every major cloud sells it as a managed service, such as Amazon RDS for MySQL.
Keep in mind
- Open-source relational database, queried with SQL, listening on port 3306 by default.
- The M in the LAMP stack and the usual database behind WordPress sites.
- Owned by Oracle since 2010; MariaDB is a community fork by its original creator.
- Offered as a managed service by all major cloud providers.
