I use PHP/MySQL for a few reasons.
1) Ease of Use - I am a Computer Science student and a Web Programmer. As
such have been exposed to a wide variety of programming languages and
environments. PHP/MySQL is one of the easiest to work with and learn, and
is THE easiest to do Web related things with (and yes, I have used and am
including ASP in that statement).
2) Availability - By this I mean not only that both PHP and MySQL are free
(which is a big factor for us starving student types), but that they setup
very easily on a variety of platforms. This means I can test scripts on a
copy of the MySQL DB from my Linux Server on my windows box before uploading
them.
3) Support - Both PHP and MySQL have very good Manuals which are very easily
accessable (both online and downloadable). In addition, I have received
extremely valuable help from the PHP mailling lists on both PHP and MySQL
questions. In most cases I have gotten faster and better responses than I
get from professors at school (who I am asking things concerning their
class...not PHP =P ) who I am paying to teach me. That alone is quite a
strong arguement.
4) Good Balance between Flexibility and Readability - In PERL they have a
saying "There's More Than One Way To Do It". I think this is a good
philosophy, but PERL takes this to more of an extreme than I like (this is
not to say that this extreme is not right for some people). When I read
through a 50 line program in a language that I am fairly skilled at I
shouldn't have to refer to the manual more than say a dozen times...right?
In Perl I often find myself having to refer to manuals a dozen times for two
or three lines! For example:
perl -we '$_ = q ?4a75737420616e6f74686572205065726c204861636b65720as?;??;
for (??;(??)x??;??)
{??;s;(..)s?;qq ?print chr 0x$1 and \161 ss?;excess;??}'
Any idea what that one does? Without running it? Paste it into a
terminal... it should run as is (does on my Linux box with PERL 5 anyway).
On the other hand, having to write in languages where you have strict types
(You want to treat a variable as an int and then as a string?!?!?!?) and
very structured design is just as distasteful to me. PHP strikes a very
good balance between the two even when working with MySQL (I won't paste any
of the kludge needed to interface with CGI and DB in other languages... but
if you have some free time look some of these programs up).
Sheridan Saint-Michel
Website Administrator
FoxJet, an ITW Company
www.foxjet.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "søren eriksen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2001 2:34 PM
Subject: [PHP-DB] Why use MySQL with PHP
> Hi everybody
> I'm writing a synopsis about PHP and mySQL.
> I'm hoping someone can help me, and tell me why
> the combination og PHP and MySQL is so common.
> What makes MySQL such a good choice when using PHP?
> What seperates MySQL from others dbms?
> -Søren Eriksen-
>
>
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