In the past month or so, I have been presenting you with a series of cPanel reseller tutorials, and since our cPanel support team stands firmly behind the idea that I should keep doing so, I intend to do just that. And today, Kyle Richards – our support team supervisor is here with a series of articles about MySQL databases – what they represent and how to create them with the cPanel control panel.

Databases, SQL and MySQL

A database consists of data that is structured in a certain order or according to a set of pre-defined rules. An example from the real world would be a phone book which contains information about the subscribers – names, addresses, phone numbers. The information in the phone book is structured in an alphabetical order and this allows us to quickly find any number as long as we know the subscriber’s names. The alphabetical order is an advantage since it saves time while we are looking for a given subscriber.

In computer systems, a database is a structured collection of data. The specific structure is defined by the way the data is organized, which depends on the database model used. The most commonly used model today is the relational database model.

In order to manage the information stored in a database, a set of tools is required. Such a set is the SQL language. SQL stands for Structured Query Language and is meant for database management purposes. The database management process is related to various database operations such as retrieving, adding, removing, changing and updating data.

MySQL is one of the most widely used relational database management systems (RDBMS). It is being used for various web-based applications. It provides reliable mechanisms through which the information stored in a database can be managed.

MySQL with cPanel

MySQL is an integral part of the cPanel hosting system. cPanel offers an easy way to manage MySQL databases.

In order to use a MySQL database for a web application, you must know the following information:

• MySQL database name – this is the name of the database
• MySQL username – this is the MySQL user who has certain privileges over a given database
• MySQL password – this is the password used by the MySQL user to authenticate themselves, i.e. to prove that they have the right to access a given MySQL database
• MySQL hostname – this is the name of the server on which MySQL is running
• MySQL port – this is the port used for connecting to the MySQL server; port 3306 is used by default