MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide

A MySQL installation includes a number of programs that work together using a client/server architecture. This chapter discusses the overall characteristics of this architecture, and the general operational characteristics of the MySQL server and the resources that it uses as it runs. The chapter covers the following exam topics:

• The client/server architectural design of MySQL

• Communication protocols that clients can use to connect to the server

• The relationship between the server's storage engines and its SQL parser and optimizer

• How the server uses disk and memory