I"m leaving SQL Server for another woman, err, DB

Hey,

I've been doing ASP web apps with SQL Server 2000 for a few years now,
but now I need to purchase a DB server license for a new web server
(which will only be running 5-6 large bandwidth sites) and there's no
way I can afford to use SQL Server. At my previous company I set up the
SQL server installation myself and it was a snap, so as a very shallow
techie I'm a little spoiled in that regard. That server is running about
40 web site databases without any problem.

My initial reaction is to go with MySQL, which I've also done a couple
of apps with, and the large field lengths are plus, but finding an easy-
to-use admin tool has been a bit vexing. I've also read about
PostGreSQL, which sounds good. But I have no idea what the tradeoffs
are. Is SQL Server less secure due to Microsoft vulnerabilities? Is
MYSQL faster because it doesn't use as many system resources? Is
PostGreSQL as well supported as MySQL, which seems to have a larger user
base?

I know some of you have strong opinions about this, so I'd be happy to
hear why or why not I should use any of the above, and if you have any
set-up or SQL-to-migration advice, I'd be most grateful.


Thanks.

Re: I"m leaving SQL Server for another woman, err, DB

hi there.

after finding out we were sold a wrong license (5-user instead of cpu) by a
microsoft sales, we decided to go for PostGreSQL 8. so for the last few days
i've been testing pgsql and migrating the databases.

what i can tell so far:
- pgsql's performance is good enough for webhosting stuff
- neither MSSQL nor PGSQL stick to SQL-92 in all aspects. so some work on
your sql statements is needed for migration.
- the featureset of pgsql is much closer to mssql than mysql's one.
- odbc/ole db drivers are not yet that comfortable as with mssql. you will
have to change some of your code (for example BOOLEAN and DATETIME
fieldtypes are handled differently)
- replication support in pgsql is very limited
- implement the use of transactions to greatly speed up pgsql

just some random thoughts. 4 out of 5 dbs are migrated without any big
issues.

cheers,
thomas

"Byron" wrote in message
news:MPG.1cb4d071902ece7b9897d1@newshost.allthenewsgroups.co m...
> Hey,
>
> I've been doing ASP web apps with SQL Server 2000 for a few years now,
> but now I need to purchase a DB server license for a new web server
> (which will only be running 5-6 large bandwidth sites) and there's no
> way I can afford to use SQL Server. At my previous company I set up the
> SQL server installation myself and it was a snap, so as a very shallow
> techie I'm a little spoiled in that regard. That server is running about
> 40 web site databases without any problem.
>
> My initial reaction is to go with MySQL, which I've also done a couple
> of apps with, and the large field lengths are plus, but finding an easy-
> to-use admin tool has been a bit vexing. I've also read about
> PostGreSQL, which sounds good. But I have no idea what the tradeoffs
> are. Is SQL Server less secure due to Microsoft vulnerabilities? Is
> MYSQL faster because it doesn't use as many system resources? Is
> PostGreSQL as well supported as MySQL, which seems to have a larger user
> base?
>
> I know some of you have strong opinions about this, so I'd be happy to
> hear why or why not I should use any of the above, and if you have any
> set-up or SQL-to-migration advice, I'd be most grateful.
>
>
> Thanks.

Re: I"m leaving SQL Server for another woman, err, DB

My understanding is that the new SQL Server Express (currently in beta) will
be free, while the Studio Express items will cost money.

If SQL Express doesn't allow connections from Internet users, I think
there's a version of SQL Server which is cheaper than the full one. MS just
announced this like 3 weeks ago. It's about $3K if I recall.



"Byron" wrote in message
news:MPG.1cb4d071902ece7b9897d1@newshost.allthenewsgroups.co m...
> Hey,
>
> I've been doing ASP web apps with SQL Server 2000 for a few years now,
> but now I need to purchase a DB server license for a new web server
> (which will only be running 5-6 large bandwidth sites) and there's no
> way I can afford to use SQL Server. At my previous company I set up the
> SQL server installation myself and it was a snap, so as a very shallow
> techie I'm a little spoiled in that regard. That server is running about
> 40 web site databases without any problem.
>
> My initial reaction is to go with MySQL, which I've also done a couple
> of apps with, and the large field lengths are plus, but finding an easy-
> to-use admin tool has been a bit vexing. I've also read about
> PostGreSQL, which sounds good. But I have no idea what the tradeoffs
> are. Is SQL Server less secure due to Microsoft vulnerabilities? Is
> MYSQL faster because it doesn't use as many system resources? Is
> PostGreSQL as well supported as MySQL, which seems to have a larger user
> base?
>
> I know some of you have strong opinions about this, so I'd be happy to
> hear why or why not I should use any of the above, and if you have any
> set-up or SQL-to-migration advice, I'd be most grateful.
>
>
> Thanks.

Re: I"m leaving SQL Server for another woman, err, DB

SQL Express and MSDE are unfortunately not allowed for use with websites.


"middletree" wrote in message
news:%23oO8GKgNFHA.1372@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> My understanding is that the new SQL Server Express (currently in beta)
> will
> be free, while the Studio Express items will cost money.
>
> If SQL Express doesn't allow connections from Internet users, I think
> there's a version of SQL Server which is cheaper than the full one. MS
> just
> announced this like 3 weeks ago. It's about $3K if I recall.
>
>
>
> "Byron" wrote in message
> news:MPG.1cb4d071902ece7b9897d1@newshost.allthenewsgroups.co m...
>> Hey,
>>
>> I've been doing ASP web apps with SQL Server 2000 for a few years now,
>> but now I need to purchase a DB server license for a new web server
>> (which will only be running 5-6 large bandwidth sites) and there's no
>> way I can afford to use SQL Server. At my previous company I set up the
>> SQL server installation myself and it was a snap, so as a very shallow
>> techie I'm a little spoiled in that regard. That server is running about
>> 40 web site databases without any problem.
>>
>> My initial reaction is to go with MySQL, which I've also done a couple
>> of apps with, and the large field lengths are plus, but finding an easy-
>> to-use admin tool has been a bit vexing. I've also read about
>> PostGreSQL, which sounds good. But I have no idea what the tradeoffs
>> are. Is SQL Server less secure due to Microsoft vulnerabilities? Is
>> MYSQL faster because it doesn't use as many system resources? Is
>> PostGreSQL as well supported as MySQL, which seems to have a larger user
>> base?
>>
>> I know some of you have strong opinions about this, so I'd be happy to
>> hear why or why not I should use any of the above, and if you have any
>> set-up or SQL-to-migration advice, I'd be most grateful.
>>
>>
>> Thanks.
>
>

Re: I"m leaving SQL Server for another woman, err, DB

> SQL Express and MSDE are unfortunately not allowed for use with websites.

You are not allowed to charge for commercial hosting and then shuck your
customers into MSDE. However, I don't see it written anywhere that they
can't be used for your own web site (provided you can deal with its inherent
limitations).

--
Please post DDL, sample data and desired results.
See http://www.aspfaq.com/5006 for info.

Re: I"m leaving SQL Server for another woman, err, DB

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 15:50:36 +0200, "Thomas" wrote:

>after finding out we were sold a wrong license (5-user instead of cpu) by a
>microsoft sales, we decided to go for PostGreSQL 8. so for the last few days
>i've been testing pgsql and migrating the databases.

PostGreSQL is better than MySQL for a lot of reasons, but the features
aren't as complete as Microsoft SQL. Then agian, you probably won't
use most of those features anyway.

>what i can tell so far:
>- pgsql's performance is good enough for webhosting stuff
>- neither MSSQL nor PGSQL stick to SQL-92 in all aspects. so some work on
>your sql statements is needed for migration.
>- the featureset of pgsql is much closer to mssql than mysql's one.
>- odbc/ole db drivers are not yet that comfortable as with mssql. you will
>have to change some of your code (for example BOOLEAN and DATETIME
>fieldtypes are handled differently)
>- replication support in pgsql is very limited
>- implement the use of transactions to greatly speed up pgsql

Migrations also depend greatly on the database coding that has been
done. For instance, one of the apps we have uses DTS heavily,
something pretty much dedicated to using Microsoft's product. On the
other hand, we have a bunch of stuff running on MSDE, which could
easily be ported to MySQL or PostGre SQL.

As long as you work through the differences, you shouldn't have any
real trouble adapting to other database versions. Provided the
feature set and performance meets your needs, there's no overwhelming
reaosn to use a Microsoft product here.

Jeff

>just some random thoughts. 4 out of 5 dbs are migrated without any big
>issues.
>
>cheers,
>thomas
>
>"Byron" wrote in message
>news:MPG.1cb4d071902ece7b9897d1@newshost.allthenewsgroups.c om...
>> Hey,
>>
>> I've been doing ASP web apps with SQL Server 2000 for a few years now,
>> but now I need to purchase a DB server license for a new web server
>> (which will only be running 5-6 large bandwidth sites) and there's no
>> way I can afford to use SQL Server. At my previous company I set up the
>> SQL server installation myself and it was a snap, so as a very shallow
>> techie I'm a little spoiled in that regard. That server is running about
>> 40 web site databases without any problem.
>>
>> My initial reaction is to go with MySQL, which I've also done a couple
>> of apps with, and the large field lengths are plus, but finding an easy-
>> to-use admin tool has been a bit vexing. I've also read about
>> PostGreSQL, which sounds good. But I have no idea what the tradeoffs
>> are. Is SQL Server less secure due to Microsoft vulnerabilities? Is
>> MYSQL faster because it doesn't use as many system resources? Is
>> PostGreSQL as well supported as MySQL, which seems to have a larger user
>> base?
>>
>> I know some of you have strong opinions about this, so I'd be happy to
>> hear why or why not I should use any of the above, and if you have any
>> set-up or SQL-to-migration advice, I'd be most grateful.
>>
>>
>> Thanks.
>

Re: I"m leaving SQL Server for another woman, err, DB

Hi Byron

My two-penth is that I've been using a combo of ASP classic and MySQL 4 for
about 8 months now and the speed seems to be on a par with MSSQL as far as
web serving goes.

Downsides are no SProc support and a few syntax quirks such as TOP 5 is
LIMIT 5 in MySQL, but the DDL is roughly the same.

One thing that you do have to watch if you use an ISP's MySQL installation
is that most ISPs seem to have their MySQL servers on unix/linux and are
case sensitive. If you install a test enviro installation on your Windows
PC you don't realise that this installation automatically changes all table
names (not field names) to lcase.

When you restore your test DB into your ISP's DB, if you're as unlucky as me
you will probably find that your in-line queries don't work, because you are
sending ucase calls to lcase tables. Nightmare!!!

Rgds Mac

"Aaron [SQL Server MVP]" wrote in message
news:OglPDbiNFHA.1268@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> SQL Express and MSDE are unfortunately not allowed for use with websites.

You are not allowed to charge for commercial hosting and then shuck your
customers into MSDE. However, I don't see it written anywhere that they
can't be used for your own web site (provided you can deal with its inherent
limitations).

--
Please post DDL, sample data and desired results.
See http://www.aspfaq.com/5006 for info.

Re: I"m leaving SQL Server for another woman, err, DB

In article <#LUii$uNFHA.204@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl>, nospam@nospam.com
says...
> Hi Byron
>
> My two-penth is that I've been using a combo of ASP classic and MySQL 4 for
> about 8 months now and the speed seems to be on a par with MSSQL as far as
> web serving goes.
>
> Downsides are no SProc support and a few syntax quirks such as TOP 5 is
> LIMIT 5 in MySQL, but the DDL is roughly the same.
>
> One thing that you do have to watch if you use an ISP's MySQL installation
> is that most ISPs seem to have their MySQL servers on unix/linux and are
> case sensitive. If you install a test enviro installation on your Windows
> PC you don't realise that this installation automatically changes all table
> names (not field names) to lcase.
>
> When you restore your test DB into your ISP's DB, if you're as unlucky as me
> you will probably find that your in-line queries don't work, because you are
> sending ucase calls to lcase tables. Nightmare!!!



We're leasing a new dedicated Windows 2003 server from 1&1 so we'll be
buying the db license and installing it ourselves.

I downloaded postgresql onto my XP PRo laptop to play around with it and
hit an error right out of the gate, and there hasn't been any traffic on
their newsgroup since. I don't know if I can struggle with such a
critical piece of software without a healthy community of amateur usenet
support!

I'll have to give mySQL4 another try. I had given that look last
weekend, but had trouble with the admin gui (I am phobic of command
lines).

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I'm sure I'll have more questions about
the migration once I settle on a software.

Re: I"m leaving SQL Server for another woman, err, DB

>I downloaded postgresql onto my XP PRo laptop to play around with it and
>hit an error right out of the gate, and there hasn't been any traffic on
>their newsgroup since. I don't know if I can struggle with such a
>critical piece of software without a healthy community of amateur usenet
>support!

You just nailed one of the best reasons for working with a commercial
database such as Microsoft's SQL Server. You do get what you pay for.

There is (or at least used to be, I haven't looked in a year or more)
commercial support available for MySQL and PostGreSQL. Yes, you pay
for it.

Jeff

Re: I"m leaving SQL Server for another woman, err, DB

or join the pgsql mailing list(s) with many skilled users and developers
helping day & night ;-)

- thomas

"Jeff Cochran" wrote in message
news:425004a0.866061410@msnews.microsoft.com...
> >I downloaded postgresql onto my XP PRo laptop to play around with it and
>>hit an error right out of the gate, and there hasn't been any traffic on
>>their newsgroup since. I don't know if I can struggle with such a
>>critical piece of software without a healthy community of amateur usenet
>>support!
>
> You just nailed one of the best reasons for working with a commercial
> database such as Microsoft's SQL Server. You do get what you pay for.
>
> There is (or at least used to be, I haven't looked in a year or more)
> commercial support available for MySQL and PostGreSQL. Yes, you pay
> for it.
>
> Jeff