Google is adding support for native MySQL connections to its Cloud SQL managed MySQL database, opening the possibility of using your own apps with it.

Google Cloud SQL is a fully managed MySQL service hosted on Google Cloud Platform, and it will now support the MySQL Wire Protocol, the standard connection protocol for MySQL.

According to the blog post, this means you will be able to host a MySQL database in Cloud SQL, and access it from ‘just about any application, running anywhere’'.

The ‘just about’ implies there are restrictions, but these haven’t been specified so far as we can tell.

The support means MySQL developers who have apps that use Connector/J , Connector/ODBC and Connector/.NET drivers can use the apps without modification to access databases in Cloud SQL.

The new support also means you can use third-party database tools such as Toad or MySQL Workbench to manage and work with the databases.

The support for native MySQL connections makes it easier to take an existing app and migrate it to run on the Cloud SQL service. It also enables replication to external MySQL databases for low latency connections. The blog also points out that native connectivity means you can use DBMoto from HiTSW to replicate data between Cloud SQL and on-premise databases -- including Oracle, SQL Server, and DB2, and that you can use DBShards from CodeFutures to manage sharding across Cloud SQL instances, and migrate on- and off-cloud with no downtime.