[oclug] LAMP vs MS Solutions for Small Business

[Rod Giffin]

On Wed, February 16, 2005 17:01, Adrian Irving-Beer said:
> On Wed, Feb 16, 2005 at 04:30:26PM -0500, Howard Krakower wrote:
>
>> My gut feel is that you likely need something using PHP & SQL
>> (preferably mySQL).
>
> FYI, I personally prefer PostgreSQL (www.postgresql.org).

C'mon guys.  LAMP is the combination of Linux Apache MySQL and PHP.  There
is one sentence that describes the advantage this combination has over all
other comers.  It is free, simple, fast, and reliable.

That is not to knock PostgreSQL.  That's a good product too, but it
requires more attention than MySQL does to operate.

> Other than that, I don't really know where they stand in relation to
> each other today.  Certainly PostgreSQL is much closer to the SQL
> standard, which I find handy.

Actually there is a difference in philosophy between PostgreSQL and MySQL
that is easier to explain.  PostgreSQL is a bit of a superset of SQL,
designed from the ground up to be a heavy duty transactional database.  It
DOES require attention in order to maintain it's reliability, and that
translates to operational costs.

MySQL was designed to be a fast light-weight database engine based on a
sub-set of SQL.  It does support a lot more of the SQL standard than a lot
of PostgreSQL people think it does, and it has been enhanced quite
dramatically in the past 3 years.  The thing is, MySQL is designed to not
require operational maintenance, so some of the components that would
otherwise change that are left out of the database engine itself.

It turns out that it doesn't much matter anyway, since modern database
connectivity middleware can handle the left-out-components almost
completely transparent to the programmer.

> Just something to consider.  In a POS situation where reliability and
> updatability are high concerns, it might be best to shop around.

The success of BOTH projects is an indication that BOTH philosphies are
valid.  BOTH projects have been, and can be used as components of robust
and reliable e-commerce and POS systems.  The choice of which you decide
upon is largely personal, depending on which of the two design
philosophies you line up behind.  Besides, the question that was asked is
only going to get clouded for the user asking the question if it sparks a
PostgreSQL/MySQL debate.

Rod.