MySQL Community Edition?

[Kaido]

I'm trying to choose a basic database to screw around with, eventually for business use. MySQL is installed on one of the web servers that I personally use. I did some more research on their site and now I'm confused. Is the free edition MySQL Community Edition? What's up with that - is it reliable, can it be used commercially?

 

[kamper]

The community edition is just the gpl'ed version of the database if I understand correctly. You can use it for whatever you want, it's just that if you extend/improve it you have to make your changes publicly available. They probably tell you that the community edition is not acceptable for enterprise use mostly to get you to pay for the supported version. You can choose whichever you like, whatever you're comfortable with.

If you do mean to use something free, check out postgres too. It's not so popular as mysql but in the opinion of some it is better.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: kamper
The community edition is just the gpl'ed version of the database if I understand correctly. You can use it for whatever you want, it's just that if you extend/improve it you have to make your changes publicly available. They probably tell you that the community edition is not acceptable for enterprise use mostly to get you to pay for the supported version. You can choose whichever you like, whatever you're comfortable with.

If you do mean to use something free, check out postgres too. It's not so popular as mysql but in the opinion of some it is better.

I'm not much of a database guy yet, but I want to learn. I want to make a web frontend for our company's aging database, and port the old database to a new one. It doesn't necessarily have to be free, it just has to be good. Whichever one has a free version that I could play around with before buying would be good too

 

[kamper]

I'm not sure if you can buy postgres, although you can buy support for it. Obviously you can try mysql for free and then buy it. SQL server also has some free dev editions if I'm not mistaken. It's a better database than either mysql or postgres but it might very well be overkill.

 

[Rayden]

SQL is better than postgres? Ugh. I have been using SQL Server 7 and I don't like the interface at all. I hope the engine is better. One thing about SQL Server is its made by Microsoft and its difficult to get documentation and community support tutorials and things.
From what I've heard Postgres is as high quality as Oracle and SQL Server.

 

[kamper]

sql server 2000 is all I've used and it's pretty smooth, much easier to work with than postgres or mysql. I can't personally vouch for the performance but I've seen it in far more demanding situations than either pg or mysql and it certainly has more industry confidence. Considering that it hasn't seen a version upgrade for 5 years (I'm assuming it actually came out in 2000) I think it's pretty impressive. I wonder what sql server 2005 will be like if it ever makes it out