Introduction

Walking through your local bookstore will show that there is definitely no shortage of books related to PHP and MySQL.  These ubiquitous technologies have been many a beginner's foray into the world of web development.  Since both are free and widely supported it's a safe bet that the software you create can be used in almost any circumstance with relative ease.  Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional, Third Edition is a good resource to get you started on your way.

This article is a brief introduction to MySQL and covers some resources for further study.

Introduction

MySQL (pronounced My-Ess-Que-Ell) is a relational database management system (RDBMS) that is open source. MySQL is currently one of the most popular open source RDBMS and is used by many organizations like Craigslist and Wikipedia.