December 17, 2003 at 5:40 pm
Hi,
We are a small company that produces software for use in schools. Our main products use an MSAccess database and a VB6 front end. We are planning to upgrade our product over the next 12 months or so (our exisiting database structure is due for some re-design anyway).
Our ultimate goal would be a browser based, platfom independent front end which could use any SQL based database as a back end (I know this is a big ask).
Our clients are spread across Australia and frequently have poor IT infrastructure and support, so we are looking for solutions which could work in small remote schools and also large well resourced, urban schools.
Currently we are leaning towards develping in VB.net with a SQLServer database (even though this does not appear to meet our ultimate goals of Platform/Database independence).
Can anyone either point us in the right direction to get good, clear unbiassed information to guide our decision, or alternatively give us some pointers which will help us plan our road ahead.
Thanks in advance,
Daniel
December 18, 2003 at 9:46 am
It seems that many of the vendors I work with are moving in the opposite direction. Many products used to work on your choice of several different database servers (Oracle, SQL, Sybase or DB2 being the most common), but now they're no longer offering us choice. Most of the vendors have settled on either Oracle or SQL and are making customers on the other platforms convert.
Just out of curiousity, what is the motivating factor for wanting to use any SQL database? I would think that if your app could use MSDE or SQL Server, you would cover just about all of your customer base. Even mostly Oracle or DB2 shops usually have a couple of SQL Servers.
December 18, 2003 at 10:13 am
If cost is really a factor, you might look at MySQL. Especially for non-mission critical functions, it runs on many platforms and provides basic functions.
I'd advocate SQL Server because it needs less care than DB2 or Oracle, not sure about MySQL, need someone with more experience for that, but all rdbms's need some care. If you are really hurting for IT infrastruture and worried, why leave Access? It's almost bulletproof.
MSDE will work well if you want software for a single machine/user. If you want multi user software, then SQL Server is a better choice. Just be sure you setup the maintenance, integrity, growth monitoring/handling, etc well if you don't want people to have to worry about it.
Steve Jones
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones
The Best of SQL Server Central.com 2002 - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/bestof/
December 18, 2003 at 6:19 pm
Thanks for your comments guys. We are planning to bid for some Government contracts and in some cases (both domestically and overseas) there is talk of moving away from Microsoft. Thats why the ultimate goal would be database independence. However I am interested to hear this seems to be against current industry trends.
The software needs to be multi-user and we seem to be stetching MSAccess to the limit now. Thats why we are planning to upgrade.
I think that Oracle and DB2 are probably beyond the price range of most schools (in some cases they get SQLServer as a part of a general deal that education departments have done with MS).
Am I correct in thinking that to convert a database to MySQL is likely to be significantly slower than to convert to SQLServer, but that mySQL would probably be a cheaper solution?
Thanks again for your comments,
Daniel
December 19, 2003 at 2:26 pm
mySQL is free (for the most part) and you can't get cheaper than that. However...
Developer licenses for SQL Server are real cheap these days, so there isn't much cost there.
MSDE is freely redistributable, so your clients have no extra cost to them. And you said that some of them get SQL Server for free besides.
Developing on mySQL may ultimately prove more expenseive for you. mySQL does not yet support stored procedures, so it may be difficult for you to seperate your business logic from your interface. Also, unless you use InnoDB, mySQL does not support transactions.
mySQL is also not easy to backup as it doesn't support dumps.
In short, there's only a small price difference between real cheap and totally free. I wouldn't be so quick to give mySQL an advantage based on affordability.
May 20, 2005 at 6:00 am
Hi,
I wonder why you are talking about database independence? If you ultimate goal is a web based front-end my suggestions would be to host the website somewhere central. If you develop a website in ASP or PHP without any custom client-side activex components and make sure you use well-formatted HTML then the front-end is platform independent.
When hosting a website centrally you should make a decision about the web- and database server. MySQL will support Stored Procedures in the near future, although I don't expect that you can make as sophisticated Stored Procedures as in MS SQL or Oracle.
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