Introduction and Installation - Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.1 for Effective MySQL Management - page 2

Why web applications? They improve user experience and involve them in the
process by opening up possibilities such as:

• Gathering feedback about the site

• Letting users communicate with us and with each other through forums

• Ordering goods from our e-commerce site

• Enabling easily editable web-based information (content management)

• Designing and maintaining databases from the Web

Nowadays, WWW might stand for World-Wide Wave —a big wave that profoundly
modifies the way developers think about user interface, data presentation, and most
of all, the way data reaches users and comes back to the data center.

PHP and MySQL:The leading open source duo
When we look at the web applications platforms currently offered by host providers,
we will see that the most prevalent is the PHP/MySQL combination.

Well supported by their respective homesites— http://www.php.net and
http://www.mysql.com —this duo has enabled developers to offer a lot of
readymade open source web applications, and most importantly, enabled
in-house developers to quickly put in place solid web solutions.

MySQL, which is mostly compliant with the SQL:2003 standard, is a database system
well known for its speed, robustness, and a small connection overhead. This is
important in a web context where pages must be served as quickly as possible.

PHP, usually installed as a module inside the web server, is a popular scripting
language in which applications are written to communicate with MySQL (or other
database systems) on the back end and browsers on the front end. Ironically,
the acronym's significance has evolved along with the Web evolution, from
Personal Homepage to Professional HomePage to its current recursive definition:
PHP: Hypertext Processor . A reference about the successive name changes can
be seen in PHP's source code at http://cvs.php.net/viewvc.cgi/php3/
CHANGES?r1=1.23&r2=1.24 . Available on millions of Web domains, PHP drives its
own wave of quickly developing applications.

What is phpMyAdmin?
phpMyAdmin (official homepage at http://www.phpmyadmin.net ) is a web
application written in PHP and contains (like most web applications) XHTML, CSS,
and JavaScript client code. It provides a complete web interface for administering
MySQL databases, and is widely recognized as the leading application in this field.