MySQL is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database organizes data into one or more data tables in which data may be related to each other; these relations help structure the data. SQL is a language that programmers use to create, modify and extract data from the relational database, as well as control user access to the database. In addition to relational databases and SQL, an RDBMS like MySQL works with an operating system to implement a relational database in a computer's storage system, manages users, allows for network access and facilitates testing database integrity and creation of backups.
zlib is a software library used for data compression as well as a data format. zlib was written by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler and is an abstraction of the DEFLATE compression algorithm used in their gzip file compression program. zlib is also a crucial component of many software platforms, including Linux, macOS, and iOS. It has also been used in gaming consoles such as the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Wii U, Wii, Xbox One and Xbox 360.
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of relational database management systems. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, comparisons are based on the stable versions without any add-ons, extensions or external programs.
InnoDB is a storage engine for the database management system MySQL and MariaDB. Since the release of MySQL 5.5.5 in 2010, it replaced MyISAM as MySQL's default table type. It provides the standard ACID-compliant transaction features, along with foreign key support. It is included as standard in most binaries distributed by MySQL AB, the exception being some OEM versions.
MyISAM was the default storage engine for the MySQL relational database management system versions prior to 5.5 released in December 2009. It is based on the older ISAM code, but it has many useful extensions.
Virtuoso Universal Server is a middleware and database engine hybrid that combines the functionality of a traditional relational database management system (RDBMS), object–relational database (ORDBMS), virtual database, RDF, XML, free-text, web application server and file server functionality in a single system. Rather than have dedicated servers for each of the aforementioned functionality realms, Virtuoso is a "universal server"; it enables a single multithreaded server process that implements multiple protocols. The free and open source edition of Virtuoso Universal Server is also known as OpenLink Virtuoso. The software has been developed by OpenLink Software with Kingsley Uyi Idehen and Orri Erling as the chief software architects.
Falcon is a discontinued transactional storage engine being developed for the MySQL relational database management system. Development was stopped after Oracle purchased MySQL. It was based on the Netfrastructure database engine. Falcon was designed to take advantage of Sun's ZFS file system.
An embedded database system is a database management system (DBMS) which is tightly integrated with an application software; it is embedded in the application. It is a broad technology category that includes:
Aria is a storage engine for the MariaDB and MySQL relational database management systems. Its goal is to make a crash-safe alternative to MyISAM. It is not transactional.
MongoDB is a source-available, cross-platform, document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database product, MongoDB utilizes JSON-like documents with optional schemas. MongoDB is developed by MongoDB Inc. and current versions are licensed under the Server Side Public License (SSPL). MongoDB is a member of the MACH Alliance.
MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Development is led by some of the original developers of MySQL, who forked it due to concerns over its acquisition by Oracle Corporation in 2009.
TokuDB is an open-source, high-performance storage engine for MySQL and MariaDB. It achieves this by using a fractal tree index. It is scalable, ACID and MVCC compliant, provides indexing-based query improvements, offers online schema modifications, and reduces replication lag for both hard disk drives and flash memory.
This is a comparison between notable database engines for the MySQL database management system (DBMS). A database engine is the underlying software component that a DBMS uses to create, read, update and delete (CRUD) data from a database.
Percona Server for MySQL is a distribution of the MySQL relational database management system created by Percona. It is similar to MySQL Enterprise from Oracle Corporation.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to MySQL:
RocksDB is a high performance embedded database for key-value data. It is a fork of Google's LevelDB optimized to exploit multi-core processors (CPUs), and make efficient use of fast storage, such as solid-state drives (SSD), for input/output (I/O) bound workloads. It is based on a log-structured merge-tree data structure. It is written in C++ and provides official language bindings for C++, C, and Java. Many third-party language bindings exist. RocksDB is free and open-source software, released originally under a BSD 3-clause license. However, in July 2017 the project was migrated to a dual license of both Apache 2.0 and GPLv2 license. This change helped its adoption in Apache Software Foundation's projects after blacklist of the previous BSD+Patents license clause.
MyRocks is open-source software developed at Facebook in order to use MySQL features with RocksDB implementations. It is based on Oracle MySQL 5.6.
MEMORY is a storage engine for MySQL and MariaDB relational database management systems, developed by Oracle and MariaDB. Before the version 4.1 of MySQL it was called Heap.
