Using MySQL 4.0 with .NET

have been a Microsoft SQL Server developer for a number of years. One the things I like about SQL Server is that it is easy to install and once installed it is easy to work with. I can say the same thing about MySQL, an open source database, distributed under the GPL license that you can use for free in most applications. This article will discuss MySQL in depth including installation, configuration, product limitations, and using MySQL from your Visual Studio applications.

Installing MySQL
The first step to using MySQL is to download and install MySQL. You can download MySQL (version 4.0) from www.mysql.com. While you're at the mysql.com Web site, you should download a couple of other items as well:

• MySQL Control Center. This tool provides an interface similar to the one found in the SQL Server Enterprise Manager.
• ByteFX .NET Driver for MySQL. Use this .NET data provider to access data stored in MySQL databases.

Once you have downloaded MySQL you simply run the installer for MySQL. The MySQL installer runs like any other Windows installation applications. Once you have installed the application, how do you know it is running? It was not intuitive. I e-mailed a friend who pointed out the tools to use to see if the server was running or not.

To test that MySQL is running, go to the mysql\bin directory and run an application called winmysqladmin.exe (see Figure 1). This application is much like Enterprise Manager in SQL Server.

Figure 1: The MYSQLAdmin screen shows the status of a running server.