Business and enterprise software, and other applications that help a business run

There was a time when most software professionals would have had little faith in a free database management system (DBMS). I believe that has changed significantly over the last decade, and that is due primarily to the success of MySQL. That success, to go a level deeper, is due to it’s high level of quality and its very rich feature set. Moving from one DBMS to another is rarely easy, but a move to MySQL will cost you little or nothing in lost stability or features.

Although MySQL is closely associated with the PHP programming language in the minds of most people (especially Web people), there is an Application Programming Interface (API) available for almost all popular languages, so that almost anyone can easily access their MySQL database. The database code is actually owned by Sun Microsystems, via their acquisition of the company MySQL AB. In addition to the APIs, Sun also provides two popular GUI data manipulation tools, MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser. Other similar tools are available from other vendors.

MySQL provides an almost overwhelming array of database features. An overview of some of these can be found in Wikipedia and a definitive list is available on the MySQL site. You may also be interested in a comparison of database features, once of which is available here. Comparisons are also available on the MySQL website. There are many, many useful links provided on the Wikipedia pages linked to above. It should be noted that some versions of the MySQL database are not free of charge, such as the Enterprise version.

It is safe to say that MySQL is the database used by the vast majority of Open Source software, and especially that written in PHP. MySQL documentation is readily available on the Sun site and elsewhere. As all readers of this column certainly know, there is a wealth of free (as in beer) Open Source business software available and much of it runs in conjunction with MySQL. This gives many business owners the chance to run classes of software that would otherwise be out of their financial reach.