What the heck is MySQL?
MySQL is an open source database that you can install and use for FREE on your computer OR more than likely it’s already installed on your web hosting company’s server. And you can access it through your web hosting company.
If you’re not familiar with what a database is, it’s just a way to save and organize information. SQL stands for Structured Query Language. And it’s a great tool for you to easily store and read data you’ve put into the database.
So what are some of the common applications involving the use of a MySQL database?
There are tons. One common one is a recipe database. If you’ve ever gone to a site and searched for recipes, those recipes are stored in a database. Another example is user registration for membership sites. If you’ve ever belonged to a site that required you to enter your username and password, then more than likely they had a database set up. How else would the compute remember your password for your particular username?
Databases are used to save information for future use. Now there are numerous databases out there. MySQL is the most popular because it’s reliable, high quality and it’s free. Others include Microsoft Access, and Microsoft SQL.
On the web, it’s pretty common to see MySQL paired with PHP (see our last post). MySQL is the database and PHP is the web language used to access the database and provide custom searches and custom results.
A database is made up of tables. Inside the tables are rows and columns containing the data. PHP can be used to access a specific row and / or column of data for a particular request. For example, if you were looking for a chicken recipe with lima beans, then a PHP script can be written to ‘read’ the database and retrieve those specific results.
If you think about it, that’s what search engines really are. Just giant databases. They have all these websites stored in gigantic databases and when type in a keyword, the search engine goes through their database and pulls out what they think you are looking for.
Now it’s important when you sign up for web hosting to look to see how many MySQL databases they give you. The more the merrier. Hopefully at least 1. Also check whether or not you’ll be using PHP with it. This is most common on Linux web servers. For Microsoft servers, the preferred database is either Access or SQL. And the language used to interact with the database is .Asp (Active Server Pages). So keep that in mind.
To learn more about MySQL here’s some helpful resources.
MySQL – This is the home page for MySQL
myPHPAdmin – This is a php program used by many web hosts that allows you an easy way to create and edit your MySQL databases & tables.
MySQL Front – This is a windows based open source way to edit and create tables on your home computer.