I am writing a VB6 software for my boss. It got MS Access back-end.
For deployment, we are to create a software installer (Setup.exe) with a installer setup software.

Recently, my boss decided to replace MS Access with MySQL. Unlike Access, MySQL is a database server.
My question is: can we create a Setup.exe for a software with MySQL back-end ?? Can we send Setup.exe to customers to let them do their own installations (just like normal desktop softwares) ?
Or do we have to go to client sites to install the MySQL back-end for them ?

probably the safest strategy is to assume/require that your customers already have mysql installed

I guess you could do that, but if you distribute MySQL in that way, you will have to pay for a license (unless your software is put under the GPL)

I'm not sure, but most probably linking against the MySQL libraries already requires a commercial license.

You misunderstood, I am assuming client has MySQL installed,
what I'm including in my setup.exe is not the MySQL software but the
DATABASE CREATED WITH MYSQL.

It's the DATABASE CREATED WITH MYSQL that I'm going to package into my Setup.exe. Is it possible ?

That already qualifies as "distributing related work" and as far as I know, that requires a commercial license (unless your software is open source and uses the GPL).

Quote from MySQL :: Commercial License for OEMs, ISVs and VARs

If I were you, I'd ask a MySQL representative to clarify this before you are going to ship that software to your customers.

Is that so ? MySQL is a free open source software, but to distribute a MySQL database backend requires a commercial licence ?

How about distributing MS Access database backend ? Do I have to pay extra for a licence ??
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Thank you in advance.

Yes, distributing MySQL as part of a commercial product does require a license. MySQL hasn't been free for commercial use for years, and has gotten a lot less "free" in the last few years. You definitely need a license to distribute MySQL as you've described.
You can distribute a "bare" .MDB file on any platform that includes an appropriate release/version of the Jet database engine. If you want to include the MS-Access runtime components, you do need a license to distribute them.

-PatP

You might want to look into PostgreSQL and Firebird.

Both are really free and can be used and distributed commercially without the need to pay for a license.

If you want something similar to Access then Firebird's embedded engine might actually be what you are looking for. The database itself is also a single file which might be better in your environment as well.

Both offer the same (if not more) functionality as MySQL