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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Andy Oram, my editor, for his guidance and editing, and for helping me to be the person fortunate enough to write this book. Thanks also to Kasia Trapszo, Rick Rezinas, and others for reviewing the manuscript for technical accuracy. Their assistance is greatly appreciated. I also appreciate the chances that Rikki Endsley (editor of Unix Review ) took with me at the start of my writing career, and the help that she, chromatic (editor of ONLamp.com ), and several other magazines editors gave me in developing my skills. Special thanks to Kathryn Barrett (publicist for O'Reilly) for her moral support and advice over the past couple of years . Finally, thanks to my friends Rusty Osborne for listening to me through it all and Michael Zabalaoui for buying me lunch almost every weekday while I worked on this book in lieu of a regular job.

Chapter 1. Introduction to MySQL

MySQL is an open source, multithreaded, relational database management system created by Michael "Monty" Widenius in 1995. In 2000, MySQL was released under a dual-license model that permitted the public to use it for free under the GNU Public License (GPL); this caused its popularity to soar. The company that owns and develops MySQL is MySQL AB (the AB stands for aktiebolag , or stock company). Currently, MySQL AB estimates that there are more than 4 million installations of MySQL worldwide, and reports an average of 35,000 downloads a day of MySQL installation software from its site and from mirror sites. The success of MySQL as a leading database is due not only to its price—after all, other cost-free and open source databases are available—but also its reliability, performance, and features.

1.1. The Value of MySQL

Many features contribute to MySQL's standing as a superb database system. Its speed is one of its most prominent features. In a comparison by eWEEK of several databases—including MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL, IBM DB2, and Sybase ASE—MySQL and Oracle tied for best performance and for greatest scalability (see http://www.mysql.com/it-resources/benchmarks for more details). For a database long dismissed by many people, MySQL is remarkably scalable, and is able to handle tens of thousands of tables and billions of rows of data. Plus, it manages small amounts of data quickly and smoothly.

The storage engine, which manages queries and interfaces between a user 's SQL commands and the database's backend storage, is the critical software in any database management system. MySQL offers several storage engines—previously called table types —with different advantages. Some are transaction-safe storage engines that allow for rollback of data. Additionally, MySQL has a tremendous number of built-in functions that are detailed in several chapters of this book.

MySQL is also very well-known for rapid and stable improvements. Whenever you visit MySQL AB's site to download MySQL, you will see a stable release that has been thoroughly tested. You will also see a distribution that has undergone testing, but contains components that have not been tested as thoroughly as the standard version. This version contains everything in the latest standard version plus new features that eventually will be rolled into the standard version. Each new release comes with speed and stability improvements, as well as new features.