MySQL DB is an open-source relational
database management system. Its name is a combination of "My", the
name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter, and "SQL", the
abbreviation for Structured Query Language. A relational database
organizes data into one or more data tables in which data types
may be related to each other; these relations help structure the
data. SQL is a language programmers use to create, modify and
extract data from the relational database, as well as control user
access to the database. In addition to relational databases and
SQL, an RDBMS like MySQL works with an operating system to
implement a relational database in a computer's storage system,
manages users, allows for network access, and facilitates testing
database integrity and creation of backups. MySQL is free and
open-source software under the terms of the GNU General Public
License and is also available under a variety of proprietary
licenses. MySQL was owned and sponsored by the Swedish company
MySQL AB, which was bought by Sun Microsystems (now Oracle
Corporation).[8] In 2010, when Oracle acquired Sun, Widenius
forked the open-source MySQL project to create MariaDB.[9]