[plug] Database on Linux

[Paul Wilson]

> From: Damion Hill <dhill at wantree.com.au>
> I have been doing some research as to which db will best suit my 
> needs and have looked favourably at PostgreSQL. Does anyone 
> have any horror stories about this system? I've noticed MySQL 
> seems to have more publicity but does it deserve it? Also, I have a 
> copy of Oracle (the pre-release) that I still haven't installed (sys 
> upgrade soon, might go for it), does anybody think this is the way 
> to go?

I did some work for a new ISP recently, and used MySQL to produce two
databases for them -- it worked fine. Like you are considering, I had web
browsers at the client end, and Linux/Apache/Perl/MySQL at the server end.
It works fine. The only issue that I had was one of throughput. MySQL will
handle pretty much anything that you throw at it (as far as I can tell
anyway), but Perl will hit a wall at some point. Tbhere again, Perl wasn't
part of your question, so don't worry about it.

In my case, the 'not savvy' management came from a marketing background,
and their biggest stumbling block about the 'Net as a whole revolves round
the concept of 'free software'. The attitude is that if it was any good
then it would cost because people don't give good stuff away for free for
anything other than a marketing exercise.

I priced up an NT server with MS SQL Server as one alternative, and asked
them how much they wanted me to charge them for MySQL before they would
feel happy as a second choice.  Money talks, and the system that I designed
works fine !!

Good luck with your people problems -- I really do sympathise.

Paul