“The fundamental reason that an estimated half million servers
around the world run MySQL is that it provides an incredible amount
of database power at a cost that is zero in most cases, and a few
hundred dollars in others. But another strong reason that MySQL is
chosen to power web-based database applications is PHP. As Jason
Gilmore discusses in the companion article, PHP is a powerful web
scripting language that has strong ties to the MySQL database. Both
tools are powerful in their own right, but together they can
compete with any web-database tool on the market.”
“Speed always demands a performance price in most computer
applications, and MySQL is no exception. Two of the most
fundamental high-end database features missing from MySQL are
transactions and stored procedures (including triggers). Both of
these features, particularly transactions, require an amount of
database server overhead that can noticeably impact performance. In
the interests of speed and robustness, these features have been
omitted. It’s worth noting that some high-end database features
other than transactions and stored procedures are also missing; for
instance, Oracle’s ability to calculate dates in Roman
numerals.”
“MySQL is a solid, low-cost, high-performance platform for
both building and deploying web database applications. It scales to
fairly large and busy sites with ease and is suitable for a number
of web application development tools. It’s not the right platform
for a transaction-intensive financial system, nor is it the right
system if you deal with terabytes of data. It may also not be
the right system if you’ve got a few Oracle DBAs already on staff.
But for projects ranging from personal hacking to dynamic news
sites and search engines, it can provide all the power you need at
the right price.”