[plug] Linux DBMS

[Nick Bannon]

On Mon, Mar 27, 2000 at 11:34:50AM -0500, Subba Rao wrote:
> In the e-Business arena, where are Linux servers being used?

Strange question. Is there anywhere where you _haven't_ seen them
being used?

[...]
> I am currently looking at using a DBMS server on a Linux system.
> Are Linux systems used as DBMS servers?

Good for you. Yes, all sorts of machines can be DBMS servers.

> If yes, what HW configuration
> would be recommended for a DBMS server for a e-Business application?
> 
> Which DBMS systems perform well on Linux and are not resource hogs?

Ah, well that's entirely up to your priorities.

If you're not after a resource hog, I guess you only want a small "toy"
database. An IBM-compatible PC will probably do - I hear you can get
quite fast ones now.

If your main concern is simply having a structured data storage system,
almost anything will do. Standard DBM files, XML files, even MS Access.

If you need support, reliability, high level network access etc, _and_
raw speed try MySQL.

If you need support, reliability, high level network access, etc, _and_
you actually need a RDBMS with transactions, SQL compliance et al,
try PostgreSQL.

If you need all that, on a big scale, with multiple people working on
things at once, on large amounts of data, try Oracle. There's a few
other choices in this arena - IBM DB2, Sybase, MS SQL Server etc.

Even Oracle, etc. will run fine on any new PC, but there's a reason
people buy clusters of big fast machines, each with with gigabytes of RAM,
huge caches, fat IO buses, big fast discs, multiple fast CPUs, with big
price tags and equally big support contracts to ensure that expertise
(and in the case of hardware, components) are immediately on hand in
case of problems. The brand of CPU or OS is almost irrelevant except
when it gets in the way of getting the job done.

Nick.

-- 
  Nick Bannon  | "I made this letter longer than usual because
nick at it.net.au | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal