The issue of importance here is installing and using MySQL on my iMac. To my knowledge, OS X (currently running OS X 10.5.8) has the Apache web server, Perl and PHP already installed (I've verified that by experiment). It does not have MySQL installed however and I'd like to install it.
I stumbled upon a couple versions of the Apache, Perl, PHP, MySQL bundle known by various names such as MAMP, XAMP and XAMPP. XAMPP seems to be the best of the bunch, but that's somewhat irrelevant to the discussion. What I'd like to know is if I install, say XAMPP, will this affect the built-in Apache, Perl and PHP instances installed on the machine? I don't want to mess those up in any way (i.e. will installing XAMPP change those installations?). If it's a separate install, could there be conflicts of some sort between the built-in Apache and the one installed from XAMPP?
In case it isn't obvious, I know next to nothing about web servers or their configuration.