Why is the DB on this forum so dodgy?

[bogeyman]

Don't call MySQL a DB. Those of us who regularly use such beasts know damn well that it isn't.

BTW, there are decent Open Source DBs - PostgreSQL springs immediately to mind.

Oh stop moaning.

MySQL is fine as a little workhorse database for website backends.

Nobody ever suggested that you could or should run a banking or telephone billing system on it.

PostgreSQL has its own problems - chief of which is that MySQL is ubiquitous and offered with every damned web server appliance / hosting package going - so it won't gain any traction in that area, despite being a superior DBMS.

[DimPrawn]

Oh stop moaning.

MySQL is fine as a little workhorse database for website backends.

.

Obviously not seeing the number of outages on this site. Not exactly high throughput is it? A few posts a minute.

[AtW]

Its most likely shared server

[bogeyman]

Obviously not seeing the number of outages on this site. Not exactly high throughput is it? A few posts a minute.

Well it depends on the server resources available, doesn't it?

MySQL is generally regarded as fairly high throughput (maybe because it skips on some of the finer points, like referential integrity checking).

You can't blame the DB for being on a crap underpowered server.

[Cowboy Bob]

(maybe because it skips on some of the finer points, like referential integrity checking)

Only a finer point??? I'd argue that this is the cause of many a forum crash due to keys getting out of step with different PHP scripts updating the same tables. Just a hunch...

EDIT: Notice that the breadcrumbs on the top of the forum throw errors right now? I'd lay money on that being some sort of PK clash.

[bogeyman]

Only a finer point??? I'd argue that this is the cause of many a forum crash due to keys getting out of step with different PHP scripts updating the same tables. Just a hunch...

EDIT: Notice that the breadcrumbs on the top of the forum throw errors right now? I'd lay money on that being some sort of PK clash.

True RI is important but we had RDBMSs for many years before RI was the norm. You just had to do the referentiality checking in code. Lazy BB coding I suspect, rather than MySQL's fault.

I do, however, agree that it would be nice if MySQL had a coherent RI implemention.

[hyperD]

Apologies if the forum outages caused you to do any work, we know this is inexcusable and we will be working hard to make sure you are not distracted by work again in the future.

LOL! Yes, quite impressed with the last hour - you must do more of that outage please!!

One small thing, Mr Ferret: the emoticons seem to render every time when you get to the reply/add new post page.

Any chance of caching them because until they've rendered, the Toolbar buttons seem to create a JavaScript error if you click on them prematurely?

[TheMonkey]

Let's help people understand MySQL a little better and jump to it's defense a little...

- It has referential integrity.
- It has programmable constraints
- It has stored procedures
- It has views.
- It has replication.
- It has a tiered security architecture.
- It has full text indexing that works REALLY well.
- It does ANSI SQL.
- It is extremely fast.
- It runs on more platforms than any other RDBMS.
- It has decent development tools.
- It is cheap as in £0
- It is easy to install and use.
- It has a clustering facility.
- It has good documentation.
- It has .Net providers, JDBC providers, ODBC providers and modules for almost every scripting language on the planet.

99% of MySQL's problems are the crappy PHP developers who insist on backwards compatibility with version 4.1 and below.

[AtW]

Yes, crappy developer do not write set matching in assembly, amateurs.

[Cowboy Bob]

crappy PHP developers

I've yet to meet any other sort. Just look here - http://thedailywtf.com/forums/thread/87226.aspx - where they're all banging on about using escaped strings to pass into SQL statements. And these guys nearly all seem to think they're experts.

(If you have to question why escaping strings is bad, put yourself into the aforementioned category).