MySQL is an open source database management system developed by MySQL AB, http://www.mysql.com. MySQL has the following main features:

* Works on many different platforms.

* APIs for C, C++, Eiffel, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl are available.

* Fully multi-threaded using kernel threads. It can easily use multiple CPUs if they are available.

* Provides transactional and non-transactional storage engines.

* Uses very fast B-tree disk tables (MyISAM) with index compression.

* A very fast thread-based memory allocation system.

* Very fast joins using an optimized one-sweep multi-join.

* In-memory hash tables, which are used as temporary tables.

* SQL functions are implemented using a highly optimized class library and should be as fast as possible. Usually there is no memory allocation at all after query initialization.

* The server is available as a separate program for use in a client/server networked environment. It is also available as a library that can be embedded (linked) into standalone applications. Such applications can be used in isolation or in environments where no network is available.