Opinions Kindly Required for Student Project

Dear all,

I am currently undertaking an academic project to design & build a Web Application (using HTML5 and open standards) that will require a data storage method and a means of serving the data to the Web Application.

Data will include items such as simple statistics in numeric format and information in text format.

I am considering using SQL Server as the technology choice for the database, to be hosted online via a suitable web server and accessed by the web application's data API.

It is important that the data technology used is capable of providing data exports in standard formats (CSV etc.) and accepts data imports using standard methods (SQL script).

In order to assist me with making this choice, I would be very grateful if anyone who has experience of using SQL Server with Web Applications in this way could provide brief feedback, stating if you feel SQL Server is a suitable/reliable approach.

Thank you for your help with this.

Best wishes,

Greg

 

As with most software choices, it depends on what you're doing. And in this case, what software you're writing the web app in. While PHP and other languages and frameworks have database connection options for SQL Server, if you're going to host the app on Linux you'll need to host the database server on a Windows machine.

Of course, if you're going to write your app in ASP.NET, go for it! It's a good database. Though to do the imports/exports you're talking about, I believe you need to use SQL Server Integrations Services--just depends on how complex the import and export process is.

 

If you're using "HTML 5 and open standards" SQL Server is a poor choice. Why not just use MySQL? Or, if you don't want to use that, what about MariaDB? Any type of database that can be used for interaction with a programming language (ie, all of them), can be made to export / import in whatever format you chose.