MySQL joins Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner program

London: MySQL

AB, the developer of the world's most popular open source database, announced

its participation in the Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program

as an Alliance-level partner. With over 240 members, Microsoft's

VSIP program gives partners the tools and resources they need to successfully

integrate their tools, components and services into the Visual Studio 2005

development environment.

The announcement was made at the inaugural European open source business

conference being held this week at London.

"By joining the VSIP program, MySQL is providing its community of

developers with more flexibility in building and deploying data driven

applications that target the Windows platform," said Bill Hilf, general

manager of platform strategy at Microsoft Corp. "Their decision to join the

program highlights the spectrum of developers that are taking advantage of the

reliability provided by Windows Server."

As part of the VSIP program, MySQL AB is developing a downloadable plug-in

for Visual

Studio 2005 that will allow Windows developers to quickly build MySQL

data-driven applications with Visual Studio. With this plug-in, developers will

be able to create, modify and manage MySQL database objects with an easy-to-use

interface from within the Visual Studio IDE. The MySQL Network Certified Partner

Program can also help ISVs and other third-party software providers to develop

and promote their MySQL-based solutions to the MySQL community.

"The Windows version of the MySQL Server accounts for over 40 percent of

our 50,000+ daily downloads," said Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB.

"There is obviously strong interest and popularity for Windows in the open

source developer community. We are proud to work with Microsoft to help support

its Windows platform and world-class development tools."

MySQL also uses Microsoft's open

source WiX toolset to create the installer for its database on the Windows

platform.