> MySQL does pretty much everything MSSQL does, uses less resources, is
> faster, is more stable, and only costs $200 for a commercial licence and
is
> free otherwise. There really is NO competition here.
We have used MySQL to great success, but the above statement really
misstates the case. MySQL is missing many features necessary to the daily
operation of a RDBMS. It is really only a marginal step up from Access in
this manner.
In many scenarios, MySQL is (much) faster than Microsoft SQL Server.
However, this speed comes at a terrible price, including data integrity.
There is no row level locking or transactions built into MySQL, no column or
table constraints, no default values for columns, no foreign keys, no stored
procedures, no sub-selects or views, no TRUE or FALSE constants, no UNION
statements, etc. We use these throughout our code liberally ever day.
It is true that MySQL uses less resources, but that is because Microsoft SQL
Server makes much better use of hardware and has all the features required
of an RDBMS. If you give Microsoft SQL Server a Gig of RAM, it will allocate
every last meg so that it is available when needed. From my experience, this
preferable to a server that sits idle and has to allocate and deallocate
resources on the fly while trying to answer requests. Consequently, we have
seen no performances issues with either database, though I've heard MySQL
can only handle so many (~40) concurrent requests before it becomes
unstable.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that MySQL is not the best solution for
you, as it has been for some of the projects we've been involved in in the
past, but there really is no comparison between MySQL and Microsoft SQL
Server or MySQL and any other full featured RDBMS. Given this, comparing
Microsoft SQL Server's licensing and pricing scenarios to other RDBMSs (such
as Oracle, Sybase, Informix, etc.) would seem to suggest that Microsoft SQL
Server is priced fairly.
Benjamin S. Rogers
Web Developer, c4.net
Voice: (508) 240-0051
Fax: (508) 240-0057
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