PHP MySQL Introduction

MySQL is the most popular open-source database server.

What is MySQL?

MySQL is a database. Databases define the structure for storing information.

In a database, there are some tables. Similar to HTML tables, database tables contain rows, columns, and cells.

Databases are very useful for categorizing stored information. A company's database may have tables such as "Employees", "Products", "Customers", and "Orders".

Database Table

Databases typically contain one or more tables. Each table has a name (such as "Customers" or "Orders"). Each table contains records (rows) with data.

Here is an example of a table named "Persons":

LastName FirstName Address City
Hansen Ola Timoteivn 10 Sandnes
Svendson Tove Borgvn 23 Sandnes
Pettersen Kari Storgt 20 Stavanger

The table above contains three records (each record is a person) and four columns (LastName, FirstName, Address, and City).

Query

A query is a question or request.

Through MySQL, we can query specific information from the database and get the returned record set.

Please see the following query:

SELECT LastName FROM Persons

The above query selects all data from the LastName column in the Persons table and returns a record set similar to this:

LastName
Hansen
Svendson
Pettersen

Download MySQL Database

If your PHP server does not have a MySQL database, you can download MySQL here:http://www.mysql.com/downloads/index.html

Facts About MySQL Database

One of the great features of MySQL is that it can be scaled down to support embedded database applications. Perhaps for this reason, many people believe that MySQL can only handle small and medium-sized systems.

In fact, for websites that support large data and high traffic, MySQL is the de facto standard database (such as Friendster, Yahoo, Google). This address provides an overview of companies that use MySQL:http://www.mysql.com/customers/.