MySQL vs SQL2000

[true]

I'm a linux webhoster. We added a Windows box next to our linux box 2 months ago. We added this as a Flash MX streaming server for RTMP requests and possibly a Darwin Streamer. I had no intentions of letting the Win2k box host domains. I love my penguin and so do my domains.
Can anybody explain the price for M$ SQL Server?
$2000 minimum to buy?!
I ask this b/c i have turned 2 new clients away because of it. They rang my doorbell bearing checks for a hosting account but insisted on Win2k and M$SQLServer. After i found out i would have to pay even more money to make my already kinda expensive box run SQL, i was appalled. I told the customers sorry but no dice. Why should I buy a product when a stable open source version is available for free? MS's SQL Server is at the heart of their foundation platform.
I'm aquainted with MySQL. I've got it on my linux web server but the SQL traffic is light. Does anyone have any resources or experiences with these two competing technologies? When i found out SQL charges a CAL license for a limited number of connection, i was floored. Is M$ SQL Server better? Is there a weakness to MySQL i haven't seen yet b/c of my light SQL traffic? When i say better, my query leans towards a hosting solution. Several hosts on 1 machine with heavy SQL traffic. For the purposes of discussion, let's say ten SQL requests every second.

I bring this discussion to the perlmonks b/c i always use perl to access SQL. Also, i thought the SQL decision was one every monk would be making at some point in time.

jtrue

P.S. I don't mean to omit PostgreSQL, but my ignorance keeps me tongue still.

[grep]

There are IMHO 3 major differences between MySQL and SQLServer.
• MySQL does not support stored procedures
• MySQL does not support subqueries
• SQLServer only supports 1 statement handle per DB connection

All of these can be coded around, but I would strongly urge you to consider PostgreSQL (Which has none of those 3 limitations). PostgreSQL only has one thing I consider a limitation, which is lack of formal replication support (which there are several informal methods). If you really want to get into the minutia you can compare all 3 with crash-me

As side notes (read: just my opinion)-

I really don't care for SQLServer's logging, to me it seems very much feast or famine - You are either wading through hundreds of worthless messages or you get almost nothing.

MySQL transaction support is fairly new. (not that it's bad, just new)



grep

Mynd you, mønk bites Kan be pretti nasti...

[true]

perfect. crash-me has some solid numbers without the sales jargon. thanks tons.
PostgreSQL looks very very impressive.
This Page claims native Windows compatibility will be introduced with PostgreSQL 7.4.
MSSQL Server seemed to support a larger character structure and db size than regular MySQL.
crash-me comparison claimed the following:
• MSServer supports 1000 simultaneous connections
• PostgreSQL supported 32 simultaneous connections
• MySQL supported 101 simultaneous connections

[alfie]

About the simultaneous connections: You must also keep in mind that these are the default installation values, that doesn't mean that PostgreSQL doesn't support more that 32 simultaneous connections, you just have to tweak the configuration file to make it possible. To me that output is just useless data, it doesn't speak about maximum values and/or scalability at all....
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use signature; signature(" So long\nAlfie");

[true]

If anyone has upped the limit with PostgreSQL, please indicate how many simultaneous connections they were able to add. I know this will vary from OS architecture, but a rough figure would help. The speed of the query is also very important. That will drastically effect performance and tweek the simultaneous connections summary as well. According to crash-me, MySQL offers blazing SELECT query speed for example.

[hackmare]

I am also a webhoster like you, as well as being a web application developer. I run Oracle, Sybase, and MySQL instances for different size projects.

MySQL is fine for small apps but fails on large apps due to:
lack of referencial integrity support (no cross-checking accross tables for validity of fields)
slower update/insert (but faster select)
no stored procedures (but in MySQL4 beta it is implemented and apparrently works quite well)

That said, most of my customer-support and customer-database work is on MySQL (It is far easier to use).

If you want SQL2000 capability, I suggest you consider Sybase or Oracle on Linux!! Both are much cheaper than SQL2000(even Oracle if you can deal with the added BDA requirements) and does not require a MS box. Sybase 11.9.2 is free and you can get Oracle 8i licenses for $100.00 (or free) if you ask. Sybase is trivial to install and available free.

Oracle can be acquired quite competitively but is not trivial to administer.

MS SQL Server and Sybase are 99% the same thing, having come out of the same development effort betweek sybase and microsoft in the 90s.

Have you considered Postgres? I have not used it but collegues who have used it swear by it. It is fast, cheap, and supports referencial integrity.

hackmare.
roasp.com

[mpeppler]

Just a slight correction re: Sybase on linux.

ASE 11.0.3.3 is completely free - both for development and deployment. This means that you can use it to host your clients, and your clients expecting MS-SQL will hardly see the difference.

ASE 11.9.2 is free for development, but is somewhat obsolete.

ASE 12.5.0.1 is available free for development (there is a specific Developer's Edition). It's got lot's of improvements on the previous versions. You can't use it (legally) to run a production server. ASE (Adaptive Server Enterprise) runs for something like $800 for a linux server, but for an internet license you should expect to pay something like $10,000 (steep, I know, but try Oracle...).

As someone mentioned, the alternative from Sybase is Adaptive Server Anywhere (ASA). It's a different code-line, developed from the Watcom SQL Anywhere system. It's light-weight, but supports stored procs, triggers, etc. and should be quite a bit cheaper than ASE.

Michael

[lachoy]

I'd imagine the price would actually be much more, since you're using the MSSQL 2000 database with an internet front end. (This is typically an excuse for the software vendors to turn you upside down to see how much money falls out of your pockets...)

That said, $2000 is positively cheap for such a database. If you're looking for something lighter on the pocketbook, you might try SQL Anywhere Studio. I haven't used it for a couple of years, but this is a very fast, low maintenance and quite featureful database that runs on Linux and Win32. You can access it using DBD::ASAny, DBD::Sybase or DBD::ODBC.

Another capable (moreso than MySQL, IMO) open source database that runs well on both Linux and Win32 is FirebirdSQL. I haven't had much experience with it, but it's derived from the code for InterBase which has been around for ~15 years. You can access it using DBD::InterBase or DBD::ODBC.

Chris
M-x auto-bs-mode

[bilfurd]

Another GPL option to consider is SAP DB (www.sapdb.org).

I have not had a chance to beat it up too much, but the performance is pretty impressive.