MySQL ( /maɪ ˌɛskjuːˈɛl/ “My S-Q-L”, officially, but also called /maɪ ˈsiːkwəl/ “My Sequel”) is the world’s most used open source relational database management system (RDBMS) as of 2008 that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases.
It is named after co-founder Michael Widenius’ daughter, My. The SQL phrase stands for Structured Query Language.
The MySQL development project has made its source code available under the terms of the GNU General Public License, as well as under a variety of proprietary agreements. MySQL was owned and sponsored by a single for-profit firm, the Swedish company MySQL AB, now owned by Oracle Corporation.
MySQL is a popular choice of database for use in web applications, and is a central component of the widely used LAMP open source web application software stack (and other ‘AMP’ stacks) . LAMP is an acronym for “Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python.” Free-software-open source projects that require a full-featured database…