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MySQL Stable and Performant Open-Source Relational DB - Perfect For Early Stage Companies
December 19, 2018

MySQL Stable and Performant Open-Source Relational DB - Perfect For Early Stage Companies

Gabriel Samaroo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with MySQL

We use MySQL as our primary relational database that powers all of our applications. As a company that needs to store and process large amounts of data, having a reliable database technology to build our data warehouse on top of is very important. The entire engineering team at my company uses MySQL when building applications, as well as to report on data necessary to drive the business.
  • Open-Source. Free! So you can have as many instances of MySQL setup as possible
  • Large community. MySQL has been around for a very long time, so there's tons of documentation and forums on how to do things and how to fix specific questions.
  • Many integrations. Because MySQL is so popular, there are integrations everywhere. For instance I was working with Columnar databases (Redshift, Infobright) and the supported backend engines were MySQL (not MSSQL, Oracle, Postgres, etc.)
  • Slow releases. It generally takes several years for new releases to come out, which means less new features.
  • Inferior IDE's. Toad, MySQL Workbench, etc. are okay, but some of the IDE's for other SQL Languages (ie: Microsoft SQL Management Studio) have more built in functionalities and are much easier to use
  • Harder to scale than older database technologies. It requires some serious engineering effort to scale, whereas this is much easier in a NoSQL database like MongoDB and in some other DB types like Postgres.
  • Open Source Database means big savings compared to the paid Database alternatives
  • Large community support allows for free, highly available resources for help and support. Increases development velocity.
  • Being so stable and well supported, MySQL is extremely easy to setup and use, saving time because the development team can do anything database related quickly.
MySQL has it's pros / cons. The best things about MySQL are that it is open-source/free and has such a vast community of users. If you want a free database MySQL is the quickest to use, but if you're trying to build a strong foundation for your company, I prefer Postgres. If you're willing to pay for services Microsoft SQL Server can be good (although the fact that it's a Microsoft product can be a limitation for the linux-only tech shops).
If you need a reliable, performant database that can be setup extremely quickly and won't need to service applications for HUGE amounts of data, MySQL is perfect. It's free and open-source, and there are many tutorials online to setup in minutes. Most people who have worked with databases are familiar with MySQL, and probably have spent time using it since it is so popular.