MySQL is the most widely used open source database in the world.  If you have a high-volume Web site, or a widely used enterprise application or a pretty advanced communication network, you should rely on MySQL to power your applications.

There are several challenges, however, to using MySQL.  You cannot be sure which version is most secure, scalable, updated or reliable.  You cannot be guaranteed that you are made aware of problems, such as when your application or server is down, or if there are latency issues or if there are other things that are slowing down your server.  You cannot be sure whether or not the MySQL you are using has security loopholes and other issues.  Plus, you might have a difficult time optimizing your database designs and queries before deploying them to use, nor will it be easy to tune the performance of application or user SQL code.  Integration with other existing standards might also prove to be a challenge.

These are issues that everyone considering using MySQL and other open source software must confidently answer.  If you are grappling with this, you can call Four Cornerstone and allow us to help.  Or you could choose to use MySQL Enterprise Edition.

MySQL Enterprise Edition is a paid software that includes:

• MySQL Database, which gives you a transaction-safe database that has low level locking, crash recovery and roll back capabilities out of the box.   It is scalable and high performing, making it perfect for e-Commerce, cloud SaaS, Web hosting and Web-based applications.  It is also great for data mart and corporate OLTP applications, as well at data storage used for big data.  It is easy and affordable to administer and is very reliable, too.

• MySQL Replication, which allows you to scale your databases by creating multiple copies of your database so that you could grow your database workloads fast.  This also allows you to be highly available.

• MySQL Enterprise Audit, which is an audit interface plugin that lets you write your own auditing solutions based on what your applications require.

• MySQL Enterprise Security, which gives you an authentication interface that allows you to write your own plug-ins to check client connections against lDAP, PAM, Windows Active Directory and other external resources.  This enables you to easily use current security infrastructure and standards.

• MySQL Thread Pool, which allows you to surpass the limitations of the thread-handling model that is used in MySQL Database and makes your database easily scalable.

High availability solutions in MySQL Enterprise Edition include Oracle VM Template for MySQL Enterprise Edition (which allows you to have virtualized MySQL databases), Windows Server Failover Clustering, Oracle Linux with DRBD Stack and Oracle Solaris Clustering.

MySQL Enterprise also has MySQL Enterprise Backup, which lets you perform hot database backups even without taking it offline.  It also helps you restore data from a backup either to a specific time period or a partial restore.  You also have the ability to compress your backed up files to more than 90% less than the original file size.

MySQL Enterprise Monitor helps you manage MySQL by automating most management tasks.  You get availability and performance monitoring, OS monitoring and visual query analysis.

You can also monitor InnoDB metrics, MySQL Cluster metrics, and your MySQL slaves and masters.  It also helps you see that your hot backups are running according to your specifications, as well as give you a forecast of your capacity requirements in the future.  Furthermore, you are safer because it can help you identify and correct security flaws in your servers.  You can use your MySQL Enterprise Monitor on a single server or on all your MySQL servers. Lastly, it gives you MySQL Query Analyzer, which helps you fine-tune your applications’ performance.

Other tools that you can use with MySQL Enterprise include MySQL Workbench Enterprise Edition, Oracle Integrations and Oracle Premiere support.