This page lists some open source alternatives to software, primarily geared toward students. The goal is not to list every single piece of open source software, but only that which would be useful in an academic environment.

This is the Reference Manual for the MySQL Database System. It documents MySQL up to Version 5.0.4-beta, but is also applicable for older versions of the MySQL software (such as 3.23 or 4.0-production) because functional changes are indicated with reference to a version number.

CREATE [UNIQUE|FULLTEXT|SPATIAL] INDEX index_name
[USING index_type]
ON tbl_name (index_col_name,...)

index_col_name:
col_name [(length)] [ASC | DESC]

Most MySQL indexes (PRIMARY KEY, UNIQUE, INDEX, and FULLTEXT) are stored in B-trees. Exceptions are that indexes on spatial column types use R-trees, and MEMORY (HEAP) tables support hash indexes.

PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.