You may have heard the buzz going around the internet about CMS systems and blogs, and how these programs hold there data. In a MySQL database and you wonder just what is a MySQL database and is it like a text file database.
MySQL is a relational database system that uses structured query language or SQL. Because MySQL is free and open source, it makes it very popular a database system. MySQL is the most popular open source database available today with over 11 million installations.
Since MySQL is a relational database system, it uses rows and columns. These rows and columns are very much like an excel spreadsheet. Where the columns are the different fields and the rows are the records. Below is a rough example of how MySQL stores its information:
Name – Employee Number – Area
Tom – 555 – Accounting
Sue – 332 – Sales
Jeff – 532 – Sales
By using these rows and columns, MySQL can store loads of data and is very fast. The above example has 3 columns that are Name, Employee Number, and Area. By using the three columns we are able to extract exact records from the database without pulling extra data that may otherwise be required. To pull Sue’s work area we would use an SQL statement like this:
SELECT Name,Area FROM tablename WHERE Name = "Sue"
Note that in this SQL statement we only pull one record or row from the database. The row that is pulled from the database was the one with the name “Sue” in the name column. None of the other records are pulled and we don’t need to filter through all the results of the query.
Although using a MySQL database seems a bit like using an excel spreadsheet, it’s much more complicated that that. MySQL utilizes space by assigning types to the column values. Plus intricate calculations can be used when comparing records and binary data can be stored.
When creating a dynamic website, MySQL is an excellent choice for a backend database system. Due to its low cost and open source nature, more and more businesses are using it as their main database system.
In fact, most of the free and paid CMS and Blog systems available today use MySQL as their backend database system. Due to its popularity, MySQL is growing by leaps and bounds and being that it’s free, makes it all the better to use in your scripts.