A Look at MYSQL
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Comments posted to this topic are about the content posted at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/dpoole/alookatmysql.
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It's a good article, showing the most logical way to connect to MySQL (ODBC)
To be complete however, I would suggest taking a look at Premiumsoft's NaviCat, which offers a more consistent connection to MySQL. 
The main weaknesses of MySQL are the lack of procedure and trigger support, although some of this this has been added since V4 and V5 (Beta). -
until the production release of version 5, I cant consider mySQL anything more than a data store, and excellent solution if you want to just store historial audit data or similar, without having to pay for another SQL Server license.
the alpha release of mysql v5 is terrible.
-- Alex
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The main weaknes is lack of foreign key support. Last I heard they never intend to implement it due to the performance hit. This is a DBA's nightmare!! To implement foreign keys in production or not is a business decision. If data integrity is not as important as performance, then fine, drop the FK's. In my experience, the benefits of data integrity have far outweighed any miniscule performance gain from not having FK's.
If you want a good, open source database system, look into PostgreSQL (PGSQL) and/or FirebirdDB. Both appear to be mature systems. The only reason PGSQL didn't beat out MySQL, imo, is from lack of marketing and a kind of smug attitude I have seen in their user community. Many of the posts I have seen in their newsgroups have had a distinct technology-bigot attitude. They recently changed their web site so maybe they are getting with the program now though
I haven't looked into FiredbirdDB very much but it looks like they have a nice community surrounding it and one of the originators of the system (when it was a commercial product) is currently in charge of it. Also, both DBMS' has .NET clients.
[font="Tahoma"]Bryant E. Byrd, BSSE MCDBA MCAD[/font]
Business Intelligence Administrator
MSBI Administration Blog -
And also, the licenses for both PostgreSQL and Firebird are a lot more leniant than MySQL -- you can get a good product GPL licensed, or you can pay for lack of data integrity... The choice is yours
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Adam Machanic
whoisactive -
I think the title is misleading - it's not about MySQL - it's about setting up the MySQL ODBC driver in Windows for DTS.
I'd call it - "DTS and MySQL" or "My adventures with DTS and MySQL" or "Don't read this if you want an overview of MySQL from the perspective of a SQL Server Admin"
Otherwise, nice article.
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Thanks for not trashing MySQL here. I am a hardcore MS SQL Server DBA I run two SQL Server users groups, but I've got a soft spot in my heart for MySQL I use it all the time and always have the current alphas,betas, or gammas loaded somewhere in my enviornment. I run a web site that sees 10k page hits a day all of them have between 2 and 20 querries on them. The box I run it on is a POS celeron 800 with 256 meg of ram and a single IDE hard drive. It still has room to grow! I tested the same setup with MS SQL Server and damn near killed the box just on memory footprint alone. I didn't need stored procs or triggers, and I'm broker than a stepped on cookie so MySQL was a perfect fit for me. The right tool for the right job. I've housed as much as 350GB of data on a single MySQL install. I to pushes and pulls using DTS all the time to MySQL and it works fine the article did outline the good gatchas.
Great article!
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My first reaction to MySQL was that traditional databases cost money for a reason.
The more that I have used MySQL the more I find I like it although FK support, poor subquery support, lack of stored procedure support or triggers are draw backs.
However, MySQL was originally designed as an extremely fast output database for simple web applications and if you look at it from that perspective then it excels.
My first MySQL project involved using the http://www.x-cart.com shopping cart and for this appplication it was brilliant.
I think you have to look at any database system in the context of what it is designed to do and MySQL fits its niche brilliantly.
POSTGRES is interesting because it looks to be an open source ORACLE clone.
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MySQL is not free for any kind of commercial use.
That's the biggest misconception out there about it (other than people thinking that it's actually any good
). I wouldn't be surprised if most sites running MySQL are doing so in violation of the license, as they think it's a free product... PostgreSQL and FireBird, on the other hand, can be freely used in any application AFAIK.
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Adam Machanic
whoisactive -
from MySQL.com
The Commercial License is an agreement with MySQL AB for organizations that do not want to release their application source code. Commercially licensed customers get a commercially supported product with assurances from MySQL. Commercially licensed users are also free from the requirement of making their own application open source.
There is nothing in the documentation that says you MUST buy a commercial license unless you plan on violating the GPL in some way.
So, If you want to sell a product that is based on, distributes MySQL libraries or server components and don't want to release the source code to your product then you can buy a commercial license. Also, you can buy a commercial license if you want a direct legal relationship with MySQL AB.
You can run MySQL in your company all day long just like any flavor of Linux or any other GPL'ed software package.
So Adam, or anyone else that has questions about the dual licensing model I would suggest you read http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/commercial-license.html or contact MySQL AB directly like I did when I worked on my first commercial project with the prodcut.
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I appreciate your article not so much for its content, but for the fact that we, as DBAs, need to expand our level of comfort outside SQL Server.
In addition to extensive SQL Server experience, I have worked for many years with DB2 on the mainframe, and a few with Informix on Unix. Of course I tried to deny much Access knowledge, but possess enough to be dangerous.
My opinion: DBAs willing to expand their level of comfort (i.e. CLR, .net, other DBMS) will command the biggest bang for the buck.
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