MySQL

computing: software: MySQL

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MySQL is a FOSS database engine and server. It fills roughly the same niche as Microsoft SQL Server.

The MySQL package (at least in Linux) comes with a number of helper utilities, including MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser. The Administrator utility is useful for making backups, and the Query Browser serves as a front-end for interacting with databases. The Query Browser is, however, somewhat buggy as of version 4.

Criticisms

MySQL has been criticized by at least one user of lacking production-quality features, with version 5.0 only just starting to add them, where as other FOSS alternatives such as PostgreSQL had such features in their very earliest versions. MySQL has also been criticized for bad performance, e.g. locking entire tables when it only should have locked a row, as well as general incompatibility (Editor's note: with what?). (See also Wikipedia:MySQL#Criticisms of MySQL)

Working Notes

• To work around the Query Browser bug which won't let you edit a blank table, create the first entry using MySQL's command line interface:

woozle@camilla:~ $ mysql -hyourhost -uyourusername -pyourpassword
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 12531702 to server version: 4.1.13-standard

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> use yourdatabasename
Reading table information for completion of table and column names
You can turn off this feature to get a quicker startup with -A

Database changed
mysql> insert into urole (fieldname) values("sample value");
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.05 sec)

mysql>

...where yourhost is the name of your MySQL server, and can be anything that can resolve to an IP address, e.g. localhost, yourmachinename, yourserverdomain.com, or an actual IP address (I think).

Links

• MySQL Home Page
  • Version 4.1 Manual
• Wikipedia