I just want to get an updated result of everyones preferred database engine. I have been leaning towards SQL server 2008 because I love how nicely organized it is and foreign keys are very easy to assign. The only reason I see that mysql is most popular is it runs smoothly on Linux and its open source. what do you guys think?
Yup, not a lot of people can afford Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. MS costs what it does for a reason though.
It's horses for courses. MySQL is free (as in beer) and that can often be the determining factor, especially if it's me paying! For a large enterprise database, where reliability is more important than cost, Oracle is the 800 pound gorilla that can beat your database into submission. Microsoft SQL Server has some nice GUI tools, and probably works out more significantly cheaper than Oracle if you're a medium-sized enterprise.
While I don't need anything too big, I prefer MySQL because that's something what I have learned to use pretty well. It's very light on server loads. Works perfectly on smaller websites and even on few biger ones.
its right. there is no comparision to what MySql can do for a lot of dataase managers. there are a lot of active sites which run on it with best results. The very fact that its free and works on all platforms makes it even more desirable. Microsoft databases are taking a back seat because more and more active servers are shifting to linux due to the security aspect. So, it REALLY is MySql all the way..
I'm going to go a bit of topic but why is windows less secure? Is it because of the way it is built or the amount of people in it that find vulnerabilities? Would this make mac and Linux just as insecure?
The problem with Windows is that (at least until Vista), all programs ran as a unrestricted superuser. That's all programs... including viruses and trojans. Mac and Linux adopt the UNIX-like model of people using restricted users for normal-day activities, just requiring people to log in as root when doing "techy" things like installation. This makes it harder (but not impossible) for viruses and trojans to spread. So even if Mac and Linux were as popular as Windows, and had just as many haxors looking for vulnerabilities, they'd still be more secure.
MS SQL is more powerful and rich of features and can support heavy loads, go with it! Mysql is good for small websites like blogs because it's cheap and also open source. Microsoft products in databases are the best, but if you have a giant db you'll try google big table