On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 10:25:07AM +0100, Robert Shiels wrote:
> From: "Alex Page" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > I also know that we might be moving from MySQL to something a little more
> > 'professional' in the not-too-distant future.
> OK - this subject keeps coming up, and I'm confused. I have no religious axe
> to grind about databases, so what should I be using. Keep in mind that it
> must be free and work on both Linux and Windows. Obviously if I want
> industrial strength and I have lots of money I'll probably use something
> like Oracle, but is there something in between that I should be using?
I don't know about specific products, but basically: Transactions are good.
Stored procedures are very good, especially if you've got a nice database server
talking to a comparitively crap client. Basically, a good SP will let you do
everything you can't do in SQL, and return sensible errors at the same time.
Then you get into complicated stuff which I don't know much about. MySQL
stores all its files together on the disk, making data migration a matter
of copying to the right place, but compromising speed. Other products may
well use binary files, indices, stuff like that.
ANSI support is always good (although AFAIAA there's no database server that
fully supports SQL-86, let alone SQL-92). All servers support at least the
basics, some of them have extensions, and some of them *koff*Access*koff*
are just fucking wierd.
Can't really pick a name for you, but these are always good things to look
for.
Alex
--
"Four pints of milk, a turkey baster and some plastic
tubing, that's all you need."
http://www.cpio.org/~grimoire
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