Introduction To MySQL and How It Works

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INTRODUCTION

Beneath all the cute animations, the smooth transactions, lies the ruins of the backend, and talking about websites, the backend is primarily the database.

Ever wondered, how the web sites remember you?

The database is responsible for handling information that the web page may display to the user, or maybe to just store your information, but today, it performs both, mostly.

One of the most popular databases of our time is MySQL, because its small, fast, reliable, and works great with PHP, and as we know PHP is popular with web developers, that makes MySQL popular too.

How MySQL Works

MYSQL is a software, with MySQL server at its core, and a lot of utility programs, that helps is managing and administration of database.

For example, let say you want to create a new database, you send a message to the MySQL server that says, for instance, “create a new database and call it newdb.” The MySQL server then creates a subdirectory in its data directory, names the new subdirectory newdb, and puts the necessary files with the required format into the newdb subdirectory. In the same manner, to add data to that database, you send a message to the MySQL server, giving it the data and telling it where you want the data to be added.

But you have to know that the MySQL server, is waiting for requests before you send them.

The MySQL server is usually set up so that it starts when the computer starts and continues running all the time. This is the usual setup for a website. However, it isn’t necessary to set it up to start when the computer starts. If you need to, you can start it manually whenever you want to access a database. When it’s running, the MySQL server listens continuously for messages that are directed to it.

Database Structure

MySQL is a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). MySQL server is capable of managing many databases at the same time. In fact, many people might have different databases managed by a single MySQL server. Each database consists of a structure to hold the data and the data itself. A database can exist without data, only a structure, be totally empty, twiddling its thumbs and waiting for data to be stored in it. Data in a database is stored in one or more tables. You must create the database and the tables before you can add any data to the database. First you create the empty database. Then you add empty tables to the database. Database tables are organized like other tables that you’re used to — in rows and columns. Each row represents an entity in the database, such as a customer, a book, or a project. Each column contains an item of information about the entity, such as a customer name, a book name, or a project start date. The place where a particular row and column intersect, the individual cell of the table, is called a field. Tables in databases can be related. Often a row in one table is related to several rows in another table. For instance, you might have a database containing data about books you own. You would have a book table and an author table. One row in the author table might contain information about the author of several books in the book table. When tables are related, you include a column in one table to hold data that matches data in the column of another table.

Only after you’ve created the database structure can you add data.

MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS) that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases.
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 is owned and sponsored by a single for-profit firm, the Swedish company MySQL AB, now owned by Sun Microsystems, a subsidiary of Oracle Corporation.

Members of the MySQL community have created several forks such as Drizzle and MariaDB. Both forks were in progress before the Oracle acquisition (Drizzle was announced 8 months before the Sun acquisition).

Free-software projects that require a full-featured database management system often use MySQL. Such projects include (for example) WordPress, phpBB, Drupal and other software built on the LAMP software stack. MySQL is also used in many high-profile, large-scale World Wide Web products including Wikipedia, Google and Facebook.