MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, Access

which is best fro a small website and which is best for a large commnnuity website and the least troublesome to manage.

 

MySQL

why?
1.Free
2.Easy
3.Has full PHP support if you are using php for programming.(php has built in functions for MySql
4.Easy to find hosting that supports MySql
5. I use it.
6. I don't know (lets se what others have to say)

 

For every reason that Alvin listed, MySQL is the way to go. I think some may make an argument for PostgreSQL, but fewer hosts will offer it.

Another reason MySQL is the logical choice for community sites is that a lot of the CMS and blog packages ship ready to use it, so most of the setup for your site will be automated. Additionally, management after install is very easy using the tools your host provides.

Oracle and SQL Server are overkill unless you own your own server and feel very comfortable with them and already know what you are doing, especially Oracle. The licensing alone is ridiculous (MySQL and PostgreSQL are both free). I believe SQL Server has a free version for databases under 4Gb, but you may want to check.

In short, MySQL is the way to go. I manage several Oracle and SQL Server dbs at my real job, and I still choose MySQL for my projects at home, if that tells you anything.

 

Personally I think it really depends on what you want to use it for, your budget for achieving what you want to use it for and what your skills are.

If I had a free choice of database and I wasn't thinking of cost I would choose SQL Server every time but that's because I have around 10 years SQL Server experience and that's what I know, and it ties in very well with my chosen development language (.NET).

Yes SQL Server does have a free edition (SQL Server 2005 Express) but it does have some limitations although for the majority of projects your never going to hit them. There is also a free version of Oracle as well (Oracle 10G express).

However for most people their choice of software package or programming language will lead them to a database solution anyway.

Most PHP developers choose MySQL because of the reasons stated earlier in the thread, but as a consequence of that most PHP based software packages that use a database require MySQL, as a consequence of that most hosting companies offer MySQL and pretty much nothing else, so to use anything else can quite quickly become rather expensive.

To answer the original posters question though, all of the databases specified will do the job with the possible exception of Access which could be used but it was never really designed for multi user access and wouldn't scale very well so best to choose something that can straight away, however as already stated the licensing costs of Oracle will pretty much prevent its use as well as hosting companies will on the whole use MySQL or SQL Server as the costs a much less.

The 3 database that are left are pretty similar in what they will do although as a previous poster said finding a hoster with PostgreSQL could be difficult, all 3 have been used in high volume large scale sites so you would have no problem with data volumes.

If you know a lot about databases go with what you know, if you don't use one that has a lot of people who know it inside out, I've see that kind of community support for SQL Server and MySQL but not for PostgreSQL (Although I've never looked).

Jen

 

As Jenni mentioned, and I forgot to include in my original post...

Access is great for keeping up with recipes and what you have in your baseball card collection. If your data is more important than either of these, use something better!

 

Access is an absolute no. SQL Server hits major performance issues with very large databases. Plus it's expensive if you want decent performance at medium scale. Oracle is great and can handle HUGE databases, but is extremely expensive. Good Oracle DBAs are also very expensive (worth every penny).

Postgres is generally a better developed database than MySQL, but has much less support from developers and hosts.

 

Hy ,it is depending of your requirement if you want easier and free database than MYSQL is the best one because it is free and it support php scripting language inbuilt.If you working in linux platform than POSTGREY SQL is best and you want more sequrity than oracle server is suitable as per my knowledge.thanks

 

Are you kidding me? POSTGRESQL.

I like its fancy contrib packages too. I use two of them extensively.

 

PostgreSQL works on unix/linux hosting as well. Oracle is too costly

 

Postgres is great, but it's rarely included in managed hosting packages and it's much harder to find a guru (DBA or developer) than for MySQL.

 

That's strange, I have found many providers that offer basic packages with postgres for an average of $7/month. Unless you're making 10,000 spam sites then that is a tiny cost.

Second, why would a MySql guy not be able to do Postgres easily? I have found them to be very similar and if you really have extreme processing that needs to be done in a special database language then maybe you should be learning to do it yourself..

 

I have been seeing it more often, but on average it still looks pretty rare to me. Of course I could be wrong, I'm only talking from my own experience and what I hear from a few friends.

Every database has its quirks. For a small system the differences are usually irrelevant. But as the database gets large the details of both MySQL and Postgres get important. And when you want to find a DBA to take care of issues their availability is critical. With very large web sites you often need an expert on short notice to target specific issues, after which you can learn the details. Taking the time to solve very specific problems yourself without already having expertise can be costly.

 

Mysql is the best and it comes with most of the hosting provider. Also it goes well with php/perl.

 

I prefer MSSQL over anything, funny u never named MSSQL in your list, its cheap to buy, versatile and i have managaed DBs sized upto 64GB using MSSQL qithout any panic, But yeah u need fiber storage for this much big DBs.

 

Oracle definitely if you can afford it (extremely reliable and scalable, not to mention it's got tons of features such as RAC, DataGuard, etc.)

SQL Server if you want reliabilty and scalability but can't afford Oracle.

MySQL if you're broke or into open source.

 

That's an easy question. MySQL is free and is very popular.

 

A variety of responses, I've only got experience of MySQL its quite straightforward and the online helpis good so I woudl recommend it for a newbie like me and works ok on my small database 25K records well I think thats small anyway, but I haven't actually tried anything else because I didn't want to pay

 

MySQL is free and well integrated with PHP....Postgres has a reputation of being slow but slight configuration can increase the speed much above the mysql.....oracle is paid but is the industry gold standard for years.

Problems: MySQL DBs corrupt frequently when size of DB reaches above a few GBs. MS SQL and Oracle are paid. Postgres requires configuration for faster querying.

 

As has already been mentioned - Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005 is also FREE. Most small projects will not be restricted by its built-in limitations. I would say its ideal scenario is a dedicated server running multiple websites with SQL Server Express handling the databases.