Robert11 wrote:

> I am probably wrong, but I thought that being open source there would be a
> free, or inexpensive, version to "play" with on ones own PC.

Sure there is a free version, "MySQL Community Server", which you can download
as a source code or pre-compiled for Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, OSX, HP-UX, AIX,
i5/OS, QNX, NetWare, SCO and microsoft.

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html#downloads


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//Aho