[thelist] MS-SQL vs. MySQL - was Front-end for MS-SQL?

[Katherine Spice]

Chris Johnston wrote:
> 
> Okay, since this licensing issue has been raised in relation to using MS-SQL
> on the web, I was wondering what peoples opinions where of MS-SQL vs. MySQL
> on a windows platform. Specifically,

Not asking for much are you ;-) I'm not able to comment on running it on
windows, but I'll try and address the generic stuff, (good source of
reference: http://www.mysql.com)

You don't specify which win platform - this url has info on problems
with 95
http://www.mysql.com/documentation/mysql/bychapter/manual_Installing.html#Windows_vs_Unix

> 1. Limitations on connections

http://www.mysql.com/doc/T/o/Too_many_connections.html

"The maximum number of connects MySQL is depending on how good the
thread library is on a given platform. Linux or Solaris should be able
to support 500-1000 simultaneous connections, depending on how much RAM
you have and what your clients are doing."

The default allowed is 100 (that's _simultaneous_ connections, mind) and
what we use on a site which gets about 50000 hits (that's hits not db
connections, I'd guess 15000 of those made a request to the database
engine) per day and I've never had a problem.

> 2. Limitations on table size

http://www.mysql.com/documentation/mysql/bychapter/manual_Introduction.html#Features
"Up to 32 indexes per table are allowed." 
"Handles large databases. We are using MySQL with some databases that
contain 50,000,000 records and we know of users that uses MySQL with
60,000 tables and about 5,000,000,000 rows"

Also 1. and 4. are limited by the spec of your machine, not MySQL

> 3. Can both hook to ColdFusion
Yep - ColdFusion supports ODBC.

> 4. Overall speed
See 1. (ie your machine spec (CPU and disk I/O) will always be the
limiting factor for _any_ database engine).

> 5. Ease of use both in creating and managing tables as well as on the
> front-end for Joe Schmoe average user
If you can do it in Access...... No, seriously, once set up, it's as
easy as you want it to be - I do everything from the console, but then
maybe I'm a masochist :-)

> 6. Speed on the web
Different from 4 how?

> 7. Can MySQL use Access as it data entry front-end
Via ODBC - http://www.mysql.com/downloads/api-myodbc.html

> 8. Are there any licensing issues with using MySQL on a windows platform
Not specifically - see here for info
http://www.mysql.com/documentation/mysql/bychapter/manual_Licensing_and_Support.html#Licensing_policy

HTH,
Katherine