SQL vs MySQL: What's the Difference?

Web developers, application developers and even database administrators sometimes get mixed up on the difference between SQL and MySQL. And that’s perfectly excusable – while they do very different things, they’re not unrelated.

In fact, the MySQL module in the QuickStart Web Development Boot Camp covers both SQL and MySQL, which makes sense based on how they’re related. More on that later.  To fully grasp the difference between the database interface language and the management system, we should define our terms and explore how each one is used. Just like we did for HTML vs PHP.

In this article, we’ll describe how SQL and MySQL work, how they’re different, and then which you should learn first.

What is SQL?

Structured Query Language, or SQL, is a language spoken by computers, servers and databases. Simply, if you’re trying to talk with a database and access or change the data on it, odds are extremely good that SQL is the language that’s being used. Among IT personnel, database administrators and application developers in particular should be familiar with SQL.

The key to understanding SQL is to remember that it’s a language – a language that allows you to access data on a database. Just like English – or any other language – SQL has a whole vocabulary, syntax and many, many rules about usage that allow for complicated concepts to be communicated. Application developers, web developers, and database administrators, as well as the tools and software they use, often “speak” SQL to “talk” with databases and find, change, or delete data.

A word of warning, though. Be careful how you pronounce SQL. Although it’s not as common a controversy as how “gif” is pronounced (and we’re not getting into that), whether SQL is pronounced like the word “sequel” or the letters “S-Q-L” is hotly contested. We don’t take an official position here at QuickStart other than to say that everyone has a right to their opinions… but “sequel” is the obviously right pronunciation.

What is MySQL?

MySQL, despite the visual similarity to “SQL”, isn’t a language: it’s a free and open source software. MySQL is a certain kind of software called RDBMS, or relational database management system. What makes a database relational or not is more complicated than we’ll get into here, so instead let’s just focus on the “database management system” (DBMS) part.

MySQL is a DBMS, a software that aids in creating and managing entire databases. Technically speaking, a DBMS is “a software system that enables users to define, create, maintain and control access to a database.” But simplified, a DBMS is software that helps a person work with a database – especially accessing and modifying the database itself, as well as deciding who can access it. The underlying language that makes MySQL possible? SQL.

MySQL is very popular, used by many applications and websites. It’s the “M” part of the LAMP stack, which stands for the four technologies used by most open source web developers and application developers: Linux operating system, Apache servers, MySQL database management, and PHP programming language.

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When Should You Use SQL?

SQL is the worldwide standard language for making changes to databases. Like any computer language, SQL statements can be written by a developer to accomplish the goal they want. If you know the vocabulary and syntax, you can write SQL statements to update data, retrieve data, rewrite entire sections of a database, and more.

Although there are only six primary SQL commands – "Select", "Insert", "Update", "Delete", "Create", and "Drop" – a web developer or database administrator who’s skilled in “speaking” SQL can use them to accomplish almost anything you could ever need to do with a database.

Using SQL, a web developer can search all the data inside a database, retrieve data, insert new information, update existing data, delete data, create entirely new databases or tables inside a database, change permissions within a database, and much more.

If you’re an application developer and happen to need to retrieve a piece of information or need to incorporate data sets into your app, you might find yourself writing straight SQL and not relying on any other tools or systems.

We said earlier that there are only six main SQL commands – but don’t let that fool you: most SQL experts admit they’ve never stopped learning the language – even after years spent learning its more complex aspects. With those six commands and all their clarifying syntax, a skilled SQL user can find, filter, retrieve and output highly specific needles in enormous haystacks.

When Should You Use MySQL?

MySQL is a piece of software that makes dealing with the databases themselves much easier. Just like you could build a car from the wheels up and never learn to drive, with MySQL you can build and maintain databases without ever making use of the underlying data itself.

If you happened to be a database administrator and it’s your job to maintain large databases and provide people with access to the data they need to do their jobs, you’re going to rely a lot on MySQL. Or if you’re a web developer or application developer who regularly accesses different tables in different databases for multiple different uses, understanding MySQL could steer you through those labyrinths.

The basics of MySQL are easy and quick to learn, but the devil’s in the details. And databases are basically made of details. With MySQL mastered, you can use it to provide secure money transactions, manage the data that goes to complex applications on huge networks, or encrypt the data that passes to and from the database – or write web applications that do the same.

How Does Combining SQL and MySQL Achieve Better Results?

SQL and MySQL work together very well and can achieve incredible results for a web developer or application developer. Remember that SQL is a language for accessing and modifying information in a database. MySQL is a software application that facilitates creating and managing databases.

Combined, SQL and MySQL enable an administrator or developer to navigate databases, retrieve data, and edit it. That said, although you couldn’t use MySQL without SQL, you could use SQL and not choose MySQL. There are other DBMSs to choose from – applications like Oracle Database, SQLite, and Microsoft SQL Server.

But combining SQL and MySQL is one of the most popular choices made by web developers and application developers around the world. Some surveys estimate that MySQL is the world’s most common database management system – running on 39 percent of all databases.

What’s the Difference Between SQL and MySQL Commands

For the most part, MySQL commands are very similar to the underlying SQL. And when it comes to manipulating the data in databases, a MySQL command simply gets translated into SQL. That said, SQL is the Latin to MySQL’s Italian, and there are ways that the languages are slightly different.

Most of the differences between the two are very technical, changing the way that permissions or updates get made to data. In addition to that, MySQL has commands that affect how the system itself operates. These commands, like “connect”, “exit”, and “go”, tend to relate to working with the MySQL client, but when it comes to actually dealing with the data in the database, the commands are not substantially different from SQL.

Learning all the SQL and MySQL commands and the differences between them could take a web developer or application developer their entire career.

Should I Use SQL or MySQL?

Unfortunately, that question doesn’t have a satisfying answer: it depends.

Say you’re a completely brand new web developer – you’re starting out at the bottom and there’s a job you want. They’ve said you need to have a basic understanding of MySQL. Well, you might be surprised to learn that focusing on SQL itself might be your best bet.

If what you need is an entry-level familiarity with how to access data inside databases, learning the SQL language is the best way to do so, and learning about MySQL storage engines and a little bit about how MySQL extends SQL should show you just how much MySQL is capable of. It won’t make you a master, but SQL and MySQL are both all about data – and SQL is how data gets moved around in both cases.

Similarly, if you’re interested in learning to be an application developer, learning SQL first is probably your best bet. While you develop, a lot of your relationship with the data in databases will be through queries that you write yourself, and understanding the underlying language will be most important.

But if you have hopes to become a web developer, spending more time learning MySQL might be better. The entire MySQL ecosystem has tons of variables and tools to enable navigating and administering data. Although any time you retrieve data, the MySQL system will translate your changes into the SQL language for you, the breadth and complexity of what MySQL is capable of for your web development is where you should start your learning.

The QuickStart Web Development Boot Camp covers the software MySQL, but also starts your journey with SQL.

The difference between SQL and MySQL is both simple and complicated: one’s the language for manipulating data in a database, the other is a software for managing databases. If you’re just starting out as a web developer, you could spend weeks learning SQL commands and understanding how MySQL works, and still see that – in effect – there’s a lot of grey between the two. Your best bet for success in web development is differentiating SQL from MySQL with great training in both of them.