Advantages and Disadvantages of using MySQL

When it comes to having Relational Databases, developers are often confused with which database to go for. Choosing a database is a critical task and a one-time activity. Once the application builds with any database distribution, it becomes exceedingly difficult to change the underlying database or go for any other vendor.

Choosing a database involves many factors. You need to figure out how much load the database is going to have. What is the scalability of the database and the data storage? Support, especially in case of corruption in the database, is an especially important consideration. Similarly, pricing as well as features and add-ons, all make a huge impact.

In this post, we shall see why we should adopt MySQL and were to be careful about it. It is an open-source relational database that is often the first choice of the developers. In this post, we shall talk about the advantages and disadvantages of using MySQL in your application. But keep in mind, this varies from team to team, type, and the use case of the application.

 

Advantages of MySQL

 

·       Free and Open Source

Being free and open-source makes MySQL the first choice for startups and developers. MySQL is free so it makes it perfect for startups and medium-sized enterprises that prefer cost-cutting. MySQL provides almost all the features desired in any database server, so application consistency and performance is not compromised.

·       Large Community for Support

Although MySQL is open source, it does not mean you are left all with yourself. A huge community online is always at your disposal for looking up solutions or finding the best way to do things.

·       High Performance, Scalability, Flexibility

MySQL is considered one of the fastest databases available. Moreover, it also provides multi-threading to achieve more optimized performance. With the support of embedded applications, MySQL is suitable for varying use cases.

·       Platform Independency

MySQL is platform-independent. So, if your application is running on Linux Server or Windows Server or any other operating systems (UNIX, OS/2), MySQL has you covered.

 

Disadvantages of MySQL

 

·       Stability issues

MySQL suffers from stability issues and tends to corrupt under certain use cases. While this complaint is not made in general, general complaints have been made about the corruption of data when auditing or making transactions.

·       Poor Performance in High Loads

While MySQL is best for many use cases, for large enterprises having millions of records and transactions, MySQL is not suitable. The reason being for such high volumes MySQL does not provide adequate support for reading/write operations. For such scenarios, Oracle or SQL Server gains their share.