A very popular SQL-based relational DBMS for both Web and embedded applications. Pronounced "my S-Q-L," MySQL runs under all popular operating systems. The free, open source versions are available under the GNU license, and hundreds of millions of copies have been downloaded worldwide.
MySQL was originally available from MySQL AB, Uppsala, Sweden, which was acquired by Sun in 2008, and Oracle acquired Sun in 2010. Oracle offers the paid and more comprehensive Enterprise editions.
My Is Not "My" Database - It's His Daughter
Michael Widenius was the primary author of the software and co-founder of MySQL AB, and MySQL was named after his daughter My.
Extensive Language Support
Applications using MySQL are written in PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, C/C++, C# and Visual Basic. The MySQL programming interface (API) is a superset of the C language API for mSQL, which was developed by David Hughes in 1994. See
mSQL and
SQL.