MS SQL vs. MySQL - why is MS SQL better?

  • Hi everyone - this is my first post here and from reading through the forums this seemed like the best place for this...

    I recently got this from a company we work closely with who are primarily design-based and use us for the back-end and database development:

    "We are currently preparing a proposal for a major new project.

    I have had the benefit of seeing the other proposals in advance and both extol the virtues of MySQL and php over SQL and asp.

    I am going to need some ammunition to fight our corner so I’ll need your technical assistance.

    They cite disadvantages of SQL/ASP as expensive, slow and susceptible to hacking

    Advantages of MySQL/PHP as free, fast, designed for web, scalable to 50M records and superior programming!

    Over to you..."

    Can anyone make any suggestions with what to go back with?

    I can think of a number of reasons but I'm sure this has come up before and anything succint, etc. would be great.

     

    Thanks in advance for your help.

     

  • If you write crap code in PHP/MySQL then it is just a susceptible to hacking as for anything else.

    Although PHP is popular the number of PHP programmers is dwarfed by the number of ASP/ASP.NET developers therefore ASP/ASP.NET developers are cheaper to hire.

    If you are doing purely web development then MySQL is a viable offering. I would be very nervous about handling mainstream heavy weight database applications with it.

    I know that the MySQL4.0 backup procedure basically produced an enormous script that contained the CREATE TABLE and INSERT INTO statements to rebuild the database. Fine for simple stuff but can you imagine the script generated when backuping up 10GB of database ?

  • "Scalable" to 50M records?  We're jamming 200M records every day into a couple SQL Server 2000 databases at my company. 

    Here's the simple math:  If a company cannot afford a real entrprise RDBMS, then they sure as Hell can't afford me.

    Here's a good resource:

    http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/compare/default.mspx

    It doesn't have specific articles on SQL Server vs. MySQL, but it does compare SQL Server to IBM and Oracle.  You should find some info you can use there.

    -Eddie

    Eddie Wuerch
    MCM: SQL

  • I've used MySQL/PHP quite extensively in prev jobs and in my current position am using more SQL Server/ASP.

    In my opinion, MySQL can handle large datasets no worries - my last Government position had terabytes of data stored in MySQL - billions of records. Important thing to note though - they were MyISAM tables which are individual files for each table and MyISAM does not support foreign key constraints. We tried to switch to innoDB but things did not go too well. The impression I got was that MySQL innoDB does not yet perform well with very large datasets. But for smaller web applications for anything up to a gig or 2 they are fine.

    The other thing is that as of MySQL 5, stored procedures were introduced which is great, but the code is still in its infancy - not well documented and a bit buggy.

    SQL Server may be a more established product I think.

    Not sure about the claim that PHP programmers are dearer than ASP - thats certainly not true here in Australia its the reverse.

    The trouble with PHP coders is that I find there are a lot of them but not many who are highly trained in development methodology, so theres a lot of bad code out there.

  • oh yeah and as far as backup go for MySQL, that is easy. For MyISAM tables you just copy the files.

    innoDB tables you can backup in the same way, but you just need to copy the whole mysql data directory.

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