Installing and Running MySQL

MySQL is an open-source database management system (DBMS) that runs under Windows and many versions of UNIX. It can be distributed free under the General Public License (GPL), as long as the distributor makes the program's source code available along with the binary versions. MySQL is a combination of a database server and a command-line client. Once the server is running in the background (no associated window), the client software is used to type SQL commands and send them to the server. The way of installing MySQL depends on the operating system (OS) under which it will be running on. The chapter discusses installation and software launching on three of the major platforms––namely, Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.