In the open source world, truly great software starts in the hands of enthusiasts and hobbyists. Given time, it matures and develops a more robust community. Then, before most of us realize what is happening, it gains critical mass and moves into the broader industry. Companies that were using expensive commercial software just a year ago are suddenly using a free product — one of the rising stars from the world of Open Source.
We’re all familiar with software products that have followed that pattern recently: Linux, Sendmail, Perl, Apache, and so on. Few people who have worked with MySQL will tell you that it is any different. MySQL is becoming an increasingly popular choice for building business-class database applications on Linux.
As a result of MySQL’s growing role in larger organizations, its use is becoming more high-profile. This means, of course, that MySQL needs to provide responsiveness, high performance, and reliability. Already known in the industry for being a lightning-fast database server, MySQL is often up to the task straight out of the box. However, there are quite a few things that can easily slow it down. Sometimes it’s the result of poor application design. Sometimes MySQL’s default configuration simply isn’t good enough for the task at hand. And sometimes all you need to do is throw a little more hardware at the problem.
