Structured Query Language (SQL) is used to manipulate, retrieve, insert, update, and delete data in relational database management system (RDBMS). To make it simpler, SQL tells the database what to do and exactly what it needs. SQL is a standard language that all RDBMS systems such as MySQL, MS Access, MS SQL, Oracle, Postgres, and others use.

SQL allows users to access data from MySQL and define and manipulate the data. To embed within other languages, you can leverage SQL modules, libraries, and precompilers, which can help you create/drop databases and tables, allow users to create the view, and stored procedures, functions, and so on, in a database. It can do various other operations such as allowing users to set permissions on tables, procedures, and views.

Data in a relational database is stored in an organized format so that information can be retrieved easily. Data will be stored in different tables made up of rows and columns. However, the relationship can also be built between different tables that efficiently store huge data and effectively retrieve the selected data. This provides database operations with tremendous speed and flexibility.

As a relational database, MySQL has capabilities to establish relationships with different tables such as one to many, many to one, and one to one by providing primary keys, foreign keys, and indexes. It can also perform joins between tables to retrieve exact information such as inner joins and outer joins.

SQL is used as an interface to interact with the relational data in MySQL. SQL is an American National Standard Institute (ANSI) standard language which we can operate with data such as creation, deletion, updating, and retrieval.

Many industries prefer open source technology because of the technology's flexibility and cost-saving features, while MySQL has put its footprint in the market by becoming the most popular relational database for web applications. Open source means that you can view the source of MySQL and customize it based on your needs without any cost. You can download the source or binary files from its site and use them accordingly.

The MySQL server is covered under the General Public License (GNU), which means that we can freely use it for web applications, study its source code, and modify it to suit our needs. It also has the Enterprise Edition as well with advanced features included. Many enterprises still purchase the support contract from MySQL to get assistance on various issues.

MySQL has great reliability to perform well without requiring extensive troubleshooting due to bottlenecks or other slowdowns. It also incorporates a number of performance enhanced mechanisms such as index support, load utilities, and memory caches. MySQL uses InnoDB as a storage engine, which provides highly efficient ACID compliant transactional capabilities that assure high performance and scalability. To handle the rapidly growing database, MySQL Replication and cluster help scale out the database.

MySQL has great cross-platform availability that makes it more popular. It is flexible to run on major platforms such as RedHat, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Solaris, Microsoft Windows, and Apple macOS. It also provides Application Programming Interface (APIs) to interconnect with various programming languages such as C, C++, C#, PHP, Java, Ruby, Python, and Perl.

Here is a list of major releases of MySQL so far:

• Version 5.0 GA was released on 19th October, 2005
• Version 5.1 GA was released on 14th November, 2008
• Version 5.5 GA was released on 3rd December, 2010
• Version 5.6 GA was released on 5th February, 2013
• Version 5.7 GA was released on 21st October, 2015

Now it's time for the major version release--MySQL 8--which was announced on 12th September, 2016 and is still in the development milestone mode.