[ Thanks to Jeremy D.
Zawodny for this link. ]
“In the open source world, truly great software starts in the
hands of enthusiasts and hobbyists. Given time, it matures and
develops a more robust community. Then, before most of us realize
what is happening, it gains critical mass and moves into the
broader industry. Companies that were using expensive commercial
software just a year ago are suddenly using a free product — one
of the rising stars from the world of Open Source.“We’re all familiar with software products that have followed
that pattern recently: Linux, Sendmail, Perl, Apache, and so on.
Few people who have worked with MySQL will tell you that it is any
different. MySQL is becoming an increasingly popular choice for
building business-class database applications on Linux.“As a result of MySQL’s growing role in larger organizations,
its use is becoming more high-profile. This means, of course, that
MySQL needs to provide responsiveness, high performance, and
reliability. Already known in the industry for being a
lightning-fast database server, MySQL is often up to the task
straight out of the box. However, there are quite a few things that
can easily slow it down. Sometimes it’s the result of poor
application design. Sometimes MySQL’s default configuration simply
isn’t good enough for the task at hand. And sometimes all you need
to do is throw a little more hardware at the problem…”