How to install mysql linux

1. INTRODUCTION

A problem that is often encountered in an introductory Database Management course is how best to provide a meaningful hands-on experience for students. Ideally, software should be available for students to perform homework exercises, experiment with database concepts, and bring their projects to life. Such software should simulate as closely as possible an enterprise database experience. However, given the complexity and cost of the most popular enterprise-wide systems and the limited free time of most instructors to learn, install, implement and teach with such systems, careful consideration is required to assure the selection of software that will offer the most valuable educational experience to students. It is important for the instructor to spend the necessary class time teaching the concepts of database management, while not being overly burdened with learning and teaching the details of a complex technical software product.

This paper details a case study of the selection of software for an introductory Database Management course in a Management Information Systems (MIS) curriculum at a large, Mid-Atlantic state university. The course emphasizes the role of databases in organizations, entityrelationship modeling, logical database design, physical database design, and Structured Query Language (SQL). After careful consideration, the instructors decided to use MySQL database management system software as a teaching tool in the course. The factors used to select the software are discussed; the experience of teaching with MySQL is described; and the lessons learned are presented. This information should prove useful to other instructors faced with the prospect of teaching an introductory Database Management course.

2. SOFTWARE CHOICES

Courses in database management at universities often utilize database management system (DBMS) software that represents commercial enterprise software systems such as Oracle, personal database software such as Microsoft Access, or some combination of both. This paper describes a third alternative: open-source (or freely available) database software. Each of these options has advantages and disadvantages in terms of their cost to the institution, the quality of the experience provided to the students, and the ease of learning and use for both the students and the instructor. The following paragraphs describe in more detail each of these classes of database management software and the leading product packages available in each class.

According to a 2003 Gartner study, the leading relational database management systems (RDBMS) used in business today are IBM's DB2, Oracle, and Microsoft's SQL Server, with a combined revenue from new licenses in 2002 of $6.6 billion. Oracle software accounts for nearly 43% of RDBMS market share, with IBM holding a 24% share, and Microsoft a 23% share, based on 2002 new license sales (Graham and Strange, 2003). It is noted that, as these share values are based on licensing revenues only, no open source or free software packages such as MySQL are included in those figures. However, MySQL claims that their software products now represent over 20% of all RDBMS installations worldwide (Fegreus, 2002).

Since IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft have such dominant name recognition in the DBMS world, students often desire experience w ith those systems in order to enhance their job prospects. However, there can be problems with using these packages in an educational setting. These complexity and cost considerations will be discussed in more detail in the next section.

Personal database software includes those products that are designed to serve a single user or a small group on a PC platform. Microsoft Access is the leading product in this category. In contrast to complex and costly enterprise database software, Access is a more attractive option for many educational institutions. Most business school computer labs use Microsoft Office products, and installing Access and making it available to students is relatively simple. However, a personal database package does not provide the same quality of experience as a large enterprise system. Personal database packages often emphasize ease -of-usc by hiding details that are important to the effective teaching of database concepts.

While Microsoft Access is the clear leader in the personal database arena, there are other possibilities. Filemaker Pro is popular on Apple systems and has made minor inroads on the Windows operating system platform. Paradox and Lotus Approach are also available at reasonable prices, but due to the ubiquitous nature of the Windows environment and the Microsoft Office suite at most business schools, it is difficult to make a case for using any of these products as a substitute for Access.

Open source or free software presents an alternative to commercial enterprise and personal database software. Open source products are developed by networks of loosely linked individuals who work on software projects voluntarily. Their products, including the source code, are freely distributed and may be copied and further refined by others. Two of the remarkable success stories of the open source movement include the Apache web server and the Linux operating system.

Gurley (1999) recognized that open source software's distributed development results in faster product development than proprietary software, which is developed in a controlled environment by a relative few. In addition, the quality and reliability of open source software meets or exceeds that of proprietary software. It has been estimated that 63% of the world's web sites are served by Apache systems, and Linux, regarded as more reliable than Microsoft Windows 2000, commands a 33% (and growing) share of the web server operating system market (King, 2002; Netcraft, 2003).

Open source database software choices include PostgreSQL and GNU SQL. PostgreSQL (http://www.pgsql.com/) started as an academic research project at the University of California, Berkeley. It is an extension of Ingres, one of the first relational database products, which was also developed at UC-Berkeley. After Ingres became a commercial product, development efforts continued on PostgreSQL in order to fulfill the basic need in the Internet community for an open source, SQL-based, multi-user database. PosgreSQL is based on the object-relational database model, and it is considered to be one of the most advanced open source RDBMSs available based on its compliance with the ANSI SQL92 standard.

GNU SQL server (http://www.ispras.ru/~kml/gss/) is a free, portable, multi-user relational database management system currently being developed as an open source product. It features full ANSI SQL89 compliance and some SQL92 extensions. It does not, however, offer much in the way of third-party educational materials for novice users, and unsophisticated users will likely have difficulty implementing the system. For example, a search at the online book retailer Amazon.com revealed no hits for "GNU SQL", eleven hits for "PostgreSQL", and 55 hits for "MySQL".

MySQL (http://www.mysql.org/), the most popular "free" RDBMS in the world, is not an open source product, but it may be used without charge for non-commercial use on non-Windows platforms under the terms of the GNU Public License. It was developed by Sweden-based MySQL AB and is undergoing continuous revision. Over 4 million installations of MySQL exist, including production systems at companies such as Yahoo!, Cisco, Google, the US Census Bureau, NASA, Motorola, Texas Instruments, Silicon Graphics and others.

While some users may think that free software must be inferior to commercial products, MySQL has been recognized as a true enterprise RDBMS. MySQL 4.0 was recently evaluated in a review in PC Magazine as "one of the top five databases" along with IBM's DB2 Universal Database 7.2, Microsoft's SQL Server 2000 SP2, Sybase's Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.5, and Oracle's 9i Database (Dyck, 2002). Although MySQL does not have as many features as its competitors, its cost (free) certainly compares favorably.

The philosophy of the MySQL developers is to emphasize reliability and performance rather than fancy features. This is consistent with educational objectives since fancy features sometimes obscure the teaching of basic concepts. MySQL is known for its clear and uncomplicated administration, which is also valuable in the academic environment. It can be administered using command-line text entries and accessed remotely via a simple telnet connection through the Internet. MySQL is also less demanding on resources. Kientzle (2000) reports that a MySQL Internet application can run with an Apache web server on the same Pentium 200 machine utilizing only 64 MB of memory.

3. SELECTION CRITERIA