MySQL Reviews

We're on a software development team. We develop applications.

We're currently running version 5.7 of MySQL, and we are going to be upgrading to version 8 this year.

MySQL server currently is in a co-location center. We've got a hosting provider that takes care of that for us. We are looking at moving it into AWS, but that won't happen this year. We do have a smaller MySQL RDS instance in AWS right now, but it is pretty minimal. 

It is free, which is probably its most valuable feature. It is a pretty full-featured relational database. It really does everything we need it to do. 

The availability of tools could be improved in the MySQL open-source platform. They can provide more analytical tools. I haven't had any particularly difficult issues to troubleshoot on MySQL, but in the past, on Microsoft SQL Server, I had to troubleshoot some difficult issues, and better tools were in place to see what was going on in real-time on the server. So, that's the bit that is lacking on the MySQL open-source platform.

I have been using MySQL for seven years in my current company, and I have probably used it for another two or three years in a previous company.

It is very stable.

I haven't dealt with them.

We're using the open-source version right now, which is free. I do see some value in some of the more enterprise functions. We're using the open-source version right now, and I was interested in the MySQL Enterprise version really for the tools that they provide, but we decided not to make the purchase.

There are certain things that it doesn't do as well as SQL Server. There are certain things that you can do to swamp the server, such as it is just not very responsive to more complicated joins and things like that. Unfortunately, you have to try to learn what those things are, but there are certain things like correlated sub-queries and more complicated approaches that it doesn't support, and you can hang the server in doing that. So, even though it has standardized the SQL queries and other things, there are some things that it doesn't perform particularly well, such as more complicated joined scenarios. We join several tables at a time, but we tend to do that on well-known indices, primary keys, and things like that, but if you're doing something more sophisticated than that, it becomes more challenging. These things that I've mentioned are written up by people, and once you learn those things, you develop techniques to work around them. You take different approaches to solve the problem for those things. You have to do that anyway as a developer. You don't just write code and throw it out there on a production server. You certainly need a totally separate test environment and all that.

I would rate MySQL an eight out of 10.

We use the tool in projects with customer records in the database. There will be a front-end application to search and find specific data from the tool. In another project, there are product listings, and the front end fetches data from the tool and shows it in a gallery or list view on the web page or mobile application.

We used MySQL in a project for a nonprofit museum. They have a lot of donors. They have a large repository of customers who give donations. They categorize the customers based on the money they give, such as steward level, platinum level, and diamond level. The client may send out an invite for an event for a certain group of customers, such as the patrons who donate the most. MySQL helped us in that project.

The optimized process is valuable. I have seen websites that take ages to load and show the data. Many web applications with lakhs and lakhs of data will take forever to show specific results. The database performance is optimal for the application we developed. The speed is very good. There were no delays in fetching data from the back end and showing it on the front end.

At times, the autoscaling does not happen when there is a surge in load. We had to depend on manual scaling. It led to website crashes in the past.

We have been using the solution for projects running for the past five years.

Scalability is one area in which we are very cost-sensitive. We always closely monitor the charges to increase the server scale. It will help us use more space in the DB if there is an economical way for us to pick up larger servers. We have more than six lakh end users.

Most of our projects are on the cloud. A very small number are on the client's premises.

We are continuing to use the tool because it's been cost-effective. It's producing revenue for us. It's a beneficial solution.

The tool is open source. We choose open-source software mostly. We integrate a very limited number of licensed software.

I have not seen any incident with a security violation or data breach. I have not contacted the technical support team. The infrastructure team contacts the technical support team regarding server-related issues. There is a LAMP stack. The Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP combination seems to be working well for enterprises' modern web applications.

Overall, the integration works well. However, initially, we worked with a third-party integration team to fix the APIs, query, and response code. Initially, some technical work will be needed. Once it is done, the integration turns seamless.

Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

We have used the solution to manage database administration and custom attributes.

The solution has all the essential features. We can manipulate bulk data, clean up data, divide it into compartments, and optimize it.

There should be a training platform for the solution without the complexities of owning a server partition in our system.

I rate the solution's stability a ten.

It is a scalable solution. We have 1200 solution users in our organization.

The solution's initial setup was straightforward.

I rate the solution as a ten. I advise others to have durable resources to handle the operations of MySQL systems.

MySQL is an Open Source RDBMS, which means you keep your costs low, as long as you don’t need to have support and/or you have your own MySQL expert. However, MySQL also offers the enterprise edition for users that would like support and more advanced features.

When it comes to features, MySQL offers all the features of a RDBMS system, including monitoring tools, backup and recovery, high availability and easy migration from other databases.

For any web project today you are going to need a database system. If you use any Content Management System, MySQL is most of the times the database of your choice.

MySQL is easy to use, most developers have experience using it and it is an Open Source, cost-effective solution.

Although MySQL should cover most of the needs of an average user, there are constrains that need improvement.

For example, MySQL doesn’t support check constraints. MySQL’s performance is not optimal on subqueries and can significantly increase the server load for database intensive applications.

Another issue is the ineffective table manipulation during multiple transactions which result in implicit Commits.

Finally, since MySQL is now part of Oracle, and Oracle already sells their own databases, changes and bug fixes have significantly slowed down for obvious reasons. Oracle cannot improve MySQL too much, since it will then compete with their commercial database systems.

We have been using MySQL either through custom projects or through CMS, for more than 15 years now.

We haven’t encountered any serious stability issues with MySQL.

However, as with all systems, you need to keep your database “tidy”, making sure to optimize it, clean it and avoid corrupt files.

For critical projects, it may be wise to have redundancy by having two servers synced all the time.

Most scalability issues with MySQL can be simply resolved by adding more memory, optimizing settings or moving to a better server.

Of course, if you are talking about 40-50TB of data, or critical applications, then you will probably need to move to a more commercial database, such as Oracle.

We haven’t used the enterprise edition of MySQL, since most of our projects do not require such support levels. Most issues are handled by our developers.

MySQL has been the only solution for all of our web projects.

Setting up MySQL is simple, however, optimizing it requires some experience which is also based on the demands of each customer.

When we started using MySQL, it was more or less the best Open Source RDBMS for web projects. Today, you have multiple options, such as PostgreSQL, SQLite and MariaDB, therefore the choice for a newcomer should be based on their project needs.

For us, MySQL is the choice for all of our projects. It is simply to use, supported by all content management systems and, of course, Open Source.

We haven’t had any major issues, and since we have now developed MySQL technical skills and custom libraries, there is no reason to move on with a different RDBMS, unless circumstances change.

The most valuable feature of MySQL is auto-scaling.

The GUI could improve to make MySQL better.

I have been using MySQL for approximately four years.

The stability of MySQL is good.

MySQL can scale well.

I have used the support and level three support is great.

The initial setup of MySQL was straightforward.

We have not seen a return on investment.

The price of the solution is good because we have a good partner.

The solution is good at scaling.

I rate MySQL a ten out of ten.

I am using MySQL for business data queries.

The most valuable feature of MySQL is its reliability and performance.

The GUI could improve in MySQL.

I have been using MySQL for approximately 12 years.

I rate the stability of MySQL a ten out of ten.

We have approximately 100 people using this solution.

We plan to increase the usage of the solution in the future.

I rate the scalability of MySQL a ten out of ten.

I have not used support from the vendor.

The initial setup of MySQL was easy.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate MySQL a ten out of ten.

It's been used as a primary relational database for most applications. It's scalable and could easily be maintained and could be migrated to any Cloud-based Database as a Service solutions which are compatible with MySQL.e.g. AWS RDS MySQL, AWS RDS Aurora, Google SQL. 

It has improved scalability, easy-maintenance. It is open-source and is easy to use. 

MySQL is open-source. There are a lot of open-source communities trying to come up with their own patches, and to come up with their own features, which help MySQL develop faster than traditional databases like Oracle, which is closed source.

The solution is also compatible with a lot of other databases, like Percona, and it's compatible with MariaDB. It's also compatible with a lot of other shared database solutions.

Since MySQL is mostly used as a relational database in a lot of organizations, a lot of other solutions are being merged with MySQL and it's a rather easy process.

Unlike a lot of closed source services, the new features are solely based on customer feedback. The customer feedback of open source is way larger than the closed source application.

The developers of MySQL, which are Oracle MySQL, Percona, and MariaDB, seem to not be focusing much on object-oriented replication. Basically, replication is based on a text level of replication. There is a text level replication in Oracle, that is so similar it can be implemented in MySQL, however, it needs to pull a lot of resources. They have altered their approach for replication. Still, more focus on object-oriented replication would be good. 

They should come up with a better solution than the NDB cluster for better scaling. If they could come up with a better solution for write scaling, apart from the NDB cluster, which is supported by all open source communities, that would be great. Although the NDB cluster, is an open-source tool, it's not widely supported as a solution.

The latest 8.0 version has come up with whole new features. 

I've been working on Relational Database MySQL throughout my career, i.e. for 14 years. This relational database MySQL is evolved from its MyISAM only engine to InnoDB and is now compatible with other database engines too. e.g. NDB, Galera. 

MySQL is reliable. If you are talking about it in terms of relational databases, MySQL is pretty stable. If you want to go ahead with a quite secure database like any PCI database or a customer-related database or even financial data, it's still feasible to migrate to MySQL. 

There are a lot of features provided by Oracle MySQL, Percona, and MariaDB. They all have their own replication cluster. Percona has XtraDB, MariaDB has GaleraDB, Oracle MySQL has its own cluster as well. MySQL replication is common in all three MySQL flavors. MySQL replication is an excellent read-scalable feature, which has also evolved a lot from its earliest versions to the latest 8.0 version.

The NDB cluster, which has been supported and developed by Oracle, and is based on MySQL, is different than all of the other MySQL replication cluster solutions. It's both read and write scalable. All other cluster features work well for read scaling. NDB cluster is the only cluster feature recorded by Oracle MySQL, which is write scalable as well as re-scalable.

The solution seems to have plenty of technical support due to the fact that there are three companies who are product owners, and therefore there are three companies who are supporting MySQL. They are: Oracle, Percona, and MariaDB. They're doing pretty well. 

There are a lot of companies also that support their customers. This is the good thing about any software which is open-source. A lot of open source communities come up with their own features and they try to patch up with the original source. 

The initial setup has evolved a lot. It's pretty straight forward whether you're using Mac, Windows, Linux, etc. You can set it up on almost every operating system. 

It's supported by the open-source community, and they have plenty of documentation online that users can reference for assistance. If you are working in almost any operating system and you have any questions related to the installation, you'll find the documentation you need.

I am not sure, what the licensing costs are for the solution. From my experience, there is no straightforward cost. You can get that cost from the Oracle website about the Oracle MySQL licensing costs, however, it's not a straightforward price quote for everyone.

If you are an existing customer, you can negotiate and you can get a better quote. The pricing on the website may be for new customers. That said, you can still negotiate. The same is true for Percona and MariaDB as well. 

We are using MySQL 5.6, 5.7, and MySQL 8.0. 

In terms of advice, I'd say when implementing MySQL, if a company has been using any previous relational database, like Oracle, Microsoft SQL or DB2, the easiest way to migrate from any database is from Oracle to MySQL. There'll be some challenges from Microsoft SQL, as well as from DB2 to MySQL. Any existing application which is working with the Oracle database as a backend database, DB2 database as a backend database, or Microsoft as the backend database, should still work fine with MySQL, with minimal code changes. 

MySQL is a product supported by a lot of applications and a lot of organizations. Almost every client and every API would be able to support MySQL. There would still need to be a lot of testing, however, I feel almost all of the applications which need a relational database for their database solution, could leverage out of MySQL. 

We sell MySQL to customers who need to build second tier applications, not their core application. For some of our customers, when they are planning to build their second tier application, they will choose MySQL rather than Oracle which is more expensive.

The one interesting thing about this product is that it is open source. It comes from an open source product. MySQL has been positioned as open source, but it also provides support. Therefore, for a senior level product like MySQL it is different than a product like MariaDB or MongoDB which are also open source databases but they depend on the community for support. 

People just assume it is less expensive. The product is not expensive. But they also have a strong principle behind data backup and supporting that product. That's why it's quite interesting, because it's open source but it has a principle behind it.

In terms of what could be improved, some of the features that Oracle has, MySQL also has. Like if a customer is looking for a high availability solution, a security solution, a monetary solution, they can have all that in an expensive product like Oracle but they can also have it when they're using MySQL.

Every product has their own pros and cons, and also has their own market. So if the customer is already using or has already used Oracle for a long time they will know the look and feel and the character of this database that can fit into their business.

They will not choose MySQL over Oracle if they already know about Oracle. But if they start to build a new application before they are creating a secondary application then they may not be familiar with Oracle and they will try MySQL. Maybe they will like it because they will see that this database also has complete features. If they try Oracle they find the same features but different pricing. In certain things, MySQL cannot have the same benefits as Oracle but for some customers who are already using Oracle, you're not going to move to another product even if it's more expensive.

And MySQL is a cheaper product.

That's why I say that MySQL has many of the same features as Oracle. Both of them have high security.

The customer that comes from a small or medium business will prefer to choose MySQL rather than the Oracle database because they already know that this product is best for their business because it is not expensive compared to Oracle. 

Oracle does have different versions with different prices. The cheaper is called the Standard Edition. And the most expensive is the Enterprise Edition.

MySQL is comparable to the Oracle Standard Edition if we compare peer to peer. But the difference is that the Standard Edition doesn't have features like the Enterprise edition. But the high security and the high probability are not in the Standard Edition. But MySQL will have it. It will have all those kinds of features with a lower price. Because the Standard Edition is more expensive than MySQL.

Every kind of enterprise company has a core application on which their business depends. Mostly they will just choose the Oracle database. Why? Because of Oracle database's capability to handle the big workload for enterprise businesses. I think that will become their priority and MySQL will not be an option for them.

But someday I would like to see the enterprise companies changing their mindset. If you are talking about core applications related to the high workload in the future, they can choose MySQL as well. Maybe not now, because right now they still see MySQL as for small/medium business and not for the enterprise business. But I hope in the future MySQL can be seen as on the same level for their database.

That will mean that all enterprise companies can have two options when they are choosing a database solution for their core application; either Oracle database or MySQL.

I'm a reseller of MySQL. I've been selling this product for one or two years.

In terms of stability I think MySQL is categorized as a stable product. We have customers who are using MySQL as its database as an online application and it's like an online store. So it means that the work is quite heavy but we are using MySQL for it. 

In terms of scalability, because the application is online, MySQL grows when their business grows and expands with the system. They may need to add more servers, but when they add more servers it means MySQL also expands.

MySQL has that kind of capability - when the servers grow they have some kind of clustering method or clustering concept, which makes it scalable onto several servers. So it will follow the growth of the servers to cover the business.

I have been handling Oracle products for more than 10 years so I know about their kind of technical support characteristics.

For MySQL, when the customer has a problem they get their support from the Oracle portal. That means, the manual of support is online and the customer needs to register on the portal and if they have some issue or some problem using the product they need to create a ticket, and escalate or submit the ticket to the portal. Later on, they will get support from Oracle support which is worldwide.

They have their own SLA for giving support because they apply a severity level depending on how you categorize the error.

The highest severity is severity one. I think there are three or four levels. When the problem is not income to the business, you can categorize as a level three, it's a normal error. But if the error or the condition is impacting the business you can assume that is a severe one. So if you create a ticket and mark it as severe one then Oracle will directly contact Oracle support. They will contact you to help you to solve the problem within five minutes.

The initial setup is categorized as a simple and user-friendly installation. It is not complex.

I have experience installing Oracle, and if you just do the default install without too many customization, you can finish it in about one or two hours. For MySQL I think it is one hour to complete the installation.

In terms of license cost, I think the one that we are selling for MySQL is not a perpetual license like we are selling for the Oracle database.

The Oracle database license we are selling is on a perpetual basis. MySQL has that too, but for MySQL we are selling only the support.

That means that the subscription we are selling for one year consists of software support for MySQL.

That's the difference between Oracle and MySQL.

My message to our customers out there is that you want to get a good product. A good product in terms of the cost and an effective solution. But you also need some guarantee that this product will be supported by the principle.

Because there are so many cheaper products out there but they don't have principles to support the product. They rely on the community for the troubleshooting.

So I recommend to the customers to try this product. MySQL comes from open-source so it means it's a cost-effective solution. But the important thing is this product has its own principle that is supporting this product. It means you don't have to worry as long as you have a bit of a principle behind you to cover and support you. So you can use this product with less worry because you have a principle behind you. That is my message to the customers.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give MySQL an eight.