MySQL tutorial

MySQL was created by a Swidish company, MySQL AB, which was founded in 1995. The company was later acquired by Sun Microsystems in the year 2008 for about $1 billion.

The project of MySQL began in the year 1979 in the form of UNIREG which was an in-house database tool developed to manage databases. UNIREG was created by Michael Widenius. Following the creation of UNIREG, it was rewritten in several different languages to make it capable to handle big databases.

MySQL, named after Michael Widenius’s daughter, “My”,was created by combining mSQL and UNIREG. Michael Widenius and David Hughes, who had created mSQL, collaborated to connect mSQL to UNIREG’s B+ ISAM handler in order to provide indexing in mSQL.

Development of MySQL over the years:

1995	Michael Widenius, David Axmark and Allan Larsson founded MySQL AB in Sweden.
2000	MySQL releases under GPL (General Public License) and goes open source. This led to 80% drop in revenues, which took a year to recover.
2001	Marten Mickos, a sales and marketing person, was elected the CEO.
2002	User base of MySQL reaches above 3 million. Revenue of the year was around $6.5. US headquarters was also launched this year.
2003	4 million active users with 30,000 downloads per day, revenue reaches $l2 million.
2004	MySQL moves into the enterprise market and shifts from one time licensing fees from OEM partners to recurring revenues from end users. Revenue reaches $20.
2005	MySQL network launched. MySQL 5 ships with many new features. Revenues around $34.
2006	Oracle tries to buy MySQL. MySQL has a 33% market share on install base in database market.
2007	Year ended with a revenue of $75 million.
2008	Sun Microsystem acquires MySQL AB for $1 billion.
2009	Oracle acquires Sun common stock for about $7.4 billion.