Powell's Books - The Largest Independent Online BookSeller Depends on MySQL

Powell's Books, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, is the largest independent retail bookstore in the U.S. With seven locations in the Portland metropolitan area, it also has one of the book world's most successful online businesses (www.powells.com), serving customers worldwide. Their online site, Powells.com, is the largest independent online bookseller for hard-to-find and rare books, as well as for new books. In 2001, Powells.com sales jumped to 30 percent of Powell's total. The site employs 60 full-time Internet employees.

Powell's Bookstores use MySQL to run the online store and for internal research and development. Powells.com runs MySQL on the Solaris 2.7 and 2.8 operating systems; average concurrent connections are about 200 and go as high as 500. Webmaster Chris Valaas considered other databases when shopping around, including Oracle, but decided on MySQL because it is free under the GPL license and he liked MySQL AB's online documentation. Besides, Valaas and his colleagues were already experienced MySQL developers.

Valaas says MySQL excels in speed and scalability, they get a faster web response time, better disaster recovery and better reporting. "For us, MySQL's key strength is its speed and robustness. We also like that it is in active development and the developers at MySQL are always responsive to us, " said Valaas.