[Zope] Jon Udell (Byte) on Linux/ODBC and MySQLDA difficulties

[Nitin Borwankar]

On Tue, 9 Nov 1999, Karl Fast wrote:

> 
> I'm wondering if anyone else out there has opinions on this. Some non-DC
> folks. Do you use MySQL? Do you want to? Why or why not? What do you think
> about it's current status in Zope?
> 

I have used MySql for a db-driven web site with PHP3, for storing
weekly event information that is web searchable.  This is for
a local community newspaper I helped out pro-bono.

As mentioned before for the kind of industrial strength web-sites
one would build with Zope, MySQL is a mismatch.
MySQL works great for information that is high volume but not
high value - in the sense that it can be easily replaced if lost
or corrupted, or that harm done is not high.

Clearly that is not the case where e-commerce is involved and that
is the trend, increasingly, in high-end web-sites.  

Jon Udell identifies an important issue - that
the open source community (mostly) does not appreciate the importance of 
industrial strength data storage and access to the success of a platform
(this criticism does not apply to the folks behind Zope).  Hence the
lack of a major well publicised, staffed and funded effort to unify
the various data access technologies on Unix ( and Linux ).

Thus we see the surprising widespread use of MySQL in large scale
web sites (such as eGroups etc) when it is obvious that the lack of
transactions will bite them sooner rather than later.  Also, the problems
of moving legacy data between DB platforms is not taken into account
when such decisions are made often on purely idealogical considerations.

All in all, unless you are planning to have a site that will
probably not expand much (or you just simply cannot afford it)
go with Oracle, Sybase or DB2.  A year down the line you'll
be very glad you did - your job may depend on it.

-- 
Nitin Borwankar
nitin@borwankar.com






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