Primer: Open Source Databases What Are They? Open source
database management systems provide the same basic functions as
commercial databases from companies such as Oracle, but under a
licensing model that provides for free downloads and sharing of
source code. Exact capabilities and compliance with standards
such as the relational database Structured Query Language (SQL)
vary from product to product, as do licensing models. What Are
Some Examples? MySQL has become well known because of its use
for Web development, particularly as part of the "platform"
known as LAMP (for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, Python or
Perl). MySQL is backed by a corporation, MySQL AB, that sells
support contracts as well as a traditional commercial license
for embedded database applications. The open source database is
the full-featured version of MySQL's product, not an entry-level
subset, with enhancements continually added by an open source
community as well as MySQL employees. PostgreSQL is a more
traditional open source projec