Comments on: Choosing a Database

By: Andrey

Andrey — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 21:15:43 +0000

My 5c -

The vast amount of community experience and knowledge is unprecedented with MySQL 5.0.
I’m almost certain that you will not encounter a problem with MySQL
that wasn’t encountered and solved by someone else. This will definitely ease your development efforts.

Regarding scalability – by the time you will need to scale – MySQL 5.4 will become stable. Apart from major increase in performance, this version includes many improvements in scalability field.
You can take a look here:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql-5.4-features/en/index.html

By: mark

mark — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:33:05 +0000

You can use MySQL it’s easy to use,got a fast performance reliable, all LAMP use it today as standard and it runs on a variety of platforms from small to large scale websites with huge traffic. In fact i believe it’s the best freeware on the market.
Good luck.

By: Linuxem

Linuxem — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:13:37 +0000

Hi,

For my opinion you should take MySQl it is free and robust data base

from Sun Microsystems ( Or we could say Oracle )

Good luck

Eli Maor

By: mr x.

mr x. — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:55:50 +0000

The Database is one of the most crucial decisions, the foundation of any project and beholds its future potential of success. I was suprised of the “shortness” of the debate that lead to your decision, I hope inhouse there was a much more meaningfull debate.

Without going into development issues here are some business aspect:
1/ check that the licensing options is suitable to your future needs.
2/ if the product is to be sold to clients (keep total cost low) the DB should be a cheap solution that can give the needed outcomes.
3/ if centrelised app – go for the most expensie such as MSSQL, this will insure product effectiveness, scalability, and any future dev.
4/ mixed option – if time is not an issue build the query application outside of the main App, and provide optional query files for any DB chosen. this will be smart even if you choose a db and will enable you to make changes in source DB.

By: Alma

Alma — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:24:38 +0000

I think that the framework choice is much more important than the database choice.

If you insist on PHP I would suggest Kohana.
Otherwise, definitely go web2py.

By: hamancal

hamancal — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:47:23 +0000

I think an important thing to consider is the Ruby-on-rails platform. Theoretically I shouldn’t be recommending to use it as you’ve stated you wish to use PHP.
However in my experience, Ruby can boost development times as well as manage DB schemes (it’s actually a very cool engine to use). It natively works with MySQL.
btw, I didn’t forget the additional costs of learning the platform.

By: Oded

Oded — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:46:52 +0000

First read my comment above

By: Oded

Oded — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:41:50 +0000

With MySql, your app will always stay “My”, but will not grow smoothly into “everyone”.

Start with a free version of Oracle (there is such a thing: Oracle Express) or Sql server desktop.

When you grow, the code remains the same, but the deployment scales.

If you want to know more, send email for an in depth talk.

By: Yami

Yami — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:37:11 +0000

@טל

By: Shahar

Shahar — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:07:55 +0000

I think MySQL is a very wise choice, regardless of the language (PHP is also a very wise choice, regardless of the DB – don’t listen to any fanboy who says otherwise without giving a very good reason (; ).

In any case make sure you use a good abstraction layer – most of the good PHP frameworks out there (ZF, ezComponents, etc.) offer a good one. PDO is good but try to use a layer that will have you write zero or minimum SQL yourself – this way migration should be easier.

That is of course, unless you want to be super optimal and know for sure you will not need to migrate (my guess is that you won’t need to if you use MySQL right).