SQL stands for Structured Query Language. It’s a standard language for accessing and manipulating databases. MySQL is a database management system, like SQL Server, Oracle, Informix ...

In its youth, MySQL lacked certain “enterprise” features (like full SQL compliance or transactions in its default engine), but this simplicity was a feature, not a bug, for many users.

Out of the box, MySQL does not scale all that well and, in particular, cannot handle a lot of simultaneous clients compared to commercial databases. Amazon Aurora and Google Cloud SQL were both ...