MySQL is a multithreaded, multi-user SQL database management system (DBMS).

MySQL is popular for web applications and acts as the database component of the LAMP, MAMP, and WAMP platforms (Linux/Mac/Windows-Apache-MySQL-PHP/Perl/Python), and for open-source bug tracking tools like Bugzilla. Its popularity for use with web applications is closely tied to the popularity of PHP and Ruby on Rails, which is often combined with MySQL. PHP and MySQL are essential components for running popular content management systems.