MySQL 5

I can't come up with a better comment. I mean how can something this good be free??? I still can't find any reasonable answers.

I've been using Microsoft SQL Server for so long and when I first thought about changing DBMS I thought it’d be hard to move, especially after downloading and installing the Core of MySQL.

It was a little scary thinking I’d be working with command prompt only, but then I downloaded the “Workbench”. Give it a try, it’s all free and spyware free too.

Ok, now I have a wonderful free DBMS. But it’s of no use unless you can connect it to your applications. There came another gift “The Connectors”.

There are connectors for almost all technologies including (PHP, .NET, Java) and the regular ODBC connector in case you like manual work – some people still work with C/C++ and I totally respect that – ok, back to the topic.

I looked around for books on how to start with MySQL. And just as I expected I found many books to choose from. But since I’ve been using MS-SQL for a long time, I always used to go back to the MSDN to look around for news and how-to articles. Of course Microsoft people are trying to be as organized as possible, but hey when you have a database as large as theirs it’s not that easy to manage.

I can’t stay focused today but I’ll try to stay in the same topic (MySQL). So I went back to the website to check for documentation and of course I found one, not as big as MSDN’s section for MS-SQL but I found many books, sample databases, manuals and references to other pages that contain useful information. I also came across MySQL “Forums” but I wasn’t interested enough so I continued looking around for other stuff.

One thing I didn’t like about their website, when you first login the words “Buy now” were first thing my eyes caught. But after reading and researching (if asking someone is a research) I found out that you can buy the Enterprise edition “something like for novice users” (That was the result of my research).

Back to the GUI Tools, I tried using the "Workbench" and I found it somewhat interesting, since I had no prior knowledge of how to write an SQL statement to create a table (Thanks to Microsoft) but the guide was pretty helpful and didn't yell or scream at me. So now I can write correct SQL statements.

Later after all those stunning discoveries I took a look on the MaxDB, hmm. What can I say, I didn't understand much but they say "it's a heavy-duty, SAP-certified open source database for OLTP and OLAP usage which offers high reliability, availability, scalability and a very comprehensive feature set. It is targetted for large mySAP Business Suite environments and other applications that require maximum enterprise-level database functionality and complements the MySQL database server."

I hope I didn't forget to mention that MySQL is a key part of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) [the open source usuals]

I also forgot to mention how easy it was to install the MySQL core on windows.

It's fast, good looking, easy-to-use and most important it's free

I LOVE IT