Datasheet

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Part I ✦ PHP: The Basics
Monty and TcX decided to start with the substantial work already done on UNIREG while
developing a new API that was substantially similar to that used by mSQL, with the exception
of the more effective UNIREG indexing scheme. By early 1995, TcX had a 1.0 version of this
new product ready. They gave it the moniker MySQL and later that year released it under a
combination open source and commercial licensing scheme that allowed continued develop-
ment of the product while providing a revenue stream for MySQL AB, the company that
evolved from TcX.
Over the past ten years, MySQL has truly developed into a world class product. MySQL now
competes with even the most feature-rich commercial database applications such as Oracle
and Informix. Additions in the 4.x series have included much-requested features such as
transactions and foreign key support. All this has made MySQL the world’s most used open
source database.
Reasons to Love PHP and MySQL
There are ever so many reasons to love PHP and MySQL. Let us count a few.
Cost
PHP costs you nothing. Zip, zilch, nada, not one red cent. Nothing up front, nothing over the
lifetime of the application, nothing when it’s over. Did we mention that the Apache/PHP/MySQL
combo runs great on cheap, low-end hardware that you couldn’t even think about for
IIS/ASP/SQL Server?
MySQL is a slightly different animal in its licensing terms. Before you groan at the concept of
actually using commercial software, consider that although MySQL is open-source licensed
for many uses, it is not and has never been primarily community-developed software. MySQL
AB is a commercial entity with necessarily commercial interests. Unlike typical open source
projects, where developers often have regular full-time (and paying) day jobs in addition to
their freely given open source efforts, the MySQL developers derive their primary income
from the project. There are still many circumstances in which MySQL can be used for free
(basically anything nonredistributive, which covers most PHP-based projects), but if you
make money developing solutions that use MySQL, consider buying a license or a support
contract. It’s still infinitely more reasonable than just about any software license you will
ever pay for.
For purposes of comparison, Table 1-1 shows some current retail figures for similar products
in the United States. All prices quoted are for a single-processor public Web server with the
most common matching database and development tool; $0 means a no-cost alternative is a
common real-world choice.
Table 1-1: Comparative Out-of-Pocket Costs
ASP/SQL ColdFusion
Item Server MX/SQL Server JSP/Oracle PHP/MySQL
Development tool $0–2499 $599 $0–~2000 $0–249
Server $999 $2298 $0–~35,000 $0
RDBMS $4999 $4999 $15,000 $0–220
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