MySQL is the most popular relational database management system, that is free and open-source. Uses SQL (Structured Query Language) for selecting, updating, inserting data into database. It is very popular in the web hosting industry, and almost every host supports MySQL. It’s popularity is because it is free, it is powerful and fast, open-source and many web applications including: wordpress, drupal, joomla, wikimedia (the wikipedia software), galleries, and many others use it to to store website data and settings. It runs on several platforms including Linux and Windows, and it often comes in bundle with PHP, Apache web server (httpd) and Linux operating system – the LAMP stack. Though most of the hosts offer MySQL as part of their big list of features, there are some hosts that offer only specialize MySQL hosting. Todays web hosting providers allow unlimited databases and unlimited sites on one account. Databases and database users are usually managed via control panel (cPanel, Hsphere, directadmin and others), and/or via phpmyadmin (PHP application for managing MySQL via the world wide web). If your site processes much MySQL data, a separate dedicated MYSQL database server may be configured to reduced the overhead of the current server which can be used for serving web pages. This is supported by popular hosts like : HostGator, Ixwebhosting, Dreamhost, Lunarpages and others.