What is a database and what are the advantages of using a MySQL database?

A database is an independent application that stores a collection of data. Each database has one or more different APIs for creating, accessing, managing, searching, and copying the data it holds.

It is also possible to use other types of data storage, such as files on a file system or tables in large hash memory, but with these types of systems, data retrieval and writing will not be as fast and easy.

Nowadays, we use relational database management systems (RDBMS) to store and manage large amounts of data. This is called a relational database because all the data is stored in different tables, and relationships are established using primary keys or other keys called foreign keys. A

Relational Database Management System (RDBMS)

is a piece of software that -

enables you to implement a database containing tables, columns, and indexes.

• Ensure referential integrity between rows in each table.
• Automatically update index.
• Interpret SQL queries and combine information from various tables.
• Why Use MySQL Database

MySQL is a fast, easy-to-use RDBMS used by many small and large businesses. MySQL is developed, marketed, and supported by the Swedish company MySQL AB. There are many reasons why MySQL has become so popular -

MySQL is released under an open source license. So you don’t have to pay anything to use it.

• MySQL itself is a very powerful program. It handles most of the functionality of the most expensive and powerful database packages.
• MySQL uses a standard form of the well-known SQL data language.
• MySQL can run on multiple operating systems and multiple languages, including PHP, PERL, C, C, JAVA, etc.
• MySQL runs very fast and works well even with large data sets.
• MySQL is very friendly to PHP, the most appreciated web development language.
• MySQL supports large databases, up to 50 million rows or more in a single database. table. The default file size limit for tables is 4GB, but you can increase this (if your operating system can handle it) to a theoretical limit of 8 million terabytes (TB).
• MySQL is customizable. The open source GPL license allows programmers to modify the MySQL software to suit their specific circumstances.

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