MySQL is best suited for applications on platform like high-traffic content-driven websites, small-scale web apps, data warehouses which regards light analytical workloads. However its less suited for areas like enterprise data warehouse, OLAP cubes, large-scale reporting, applications requiring flexible or semi-structured data like event logging systems, product configurations, dynamic forms.
Does data compression very well, produces query results very quickly, ability to scale up as data volume/size grow in an organization, row level versioning is in memory and hence the speed. It is a very stable product for large enterprises. More detailed documentation on how to use this product in the initial stages would be really welcome.
Learning curve: is big. Newbies will face problems in understanding the platform initially. However, with plenty of online resources, one can easily find solutions to problems and learn on the go.
Backup and restore: MySQL is not very seamless. Although the data is never ruptured or missed, the process involved is not very much user-friendly. Maybe, a new command-line interface for only the backup-restore functionality shall be set up again to make this very important step much easier to perform and maintain.
For teaching Databases and SQL, I would definitely continue to use MySQL. It provides a good, solid foundation to learn about databases. Also to learn about the SQL language and how it works with the creation, insertion, deletion, updating, and manipulation of data, tables, and databases. This SQL language is a foundation and can be used to learn many other database related concepts.
I give MySQL a 9/10 overall because I really like it but I feel like there are a lot of tech people who would hate it if I gave it a 10/10. I've never had any problems with it or reached any of its limitations but I know a few people who have so I can't give it a 10/10 based on those complaints.
We have never contacted MySQL enterprise support team for any issues related to MySQL. This is because we have been using primarily the MySQL Server community edition and have been using the MySQL support forums for any questions and practical guidance that we needed before and during the technical implementations. Overall, the support community has been very helpful and allowed us to make the most out of the community edition.
SAP IQ support is top-notch. I prefer starting all my SAP IQ support tickets with their Instant Messenger, where the majority of our issues are resolved. If it makes it to their ticketing system, they are very prompt at responding and very knowledgeable in the platform.
MongoDB has a dynamic schema for how data is stored in 'documents' whereas MySQL is more structured with tables, columns, and rows. MongoDB was built for high availability whereas MySQL can be a challenge when it comes to replication of the data and making everything redundant in the event of a DR or outage.
SAP IQ is perhaps an under-marketed product in the sense that it is able to scale up very well and perform much faster and more efficiently than other products such as Oracle - when we ran multiple large queries on both Sybase IQ and Oracle, we found that that results were much faster in Sybase IQ and this gave the confidence to go for this product.