PPH and MSSQL or PostGre 2

[Phil123456]

Hello,

can i use MSSQL 7 with PHP 4 on win NT ?
Or is it better to use an emulation of PostGreSQL ?

Dos MSSQL support the foreign key, the triggers ?

Thanks

 

[JimEkleberry]

You can connect to MS SQL Server 7 with PHP through ODBC.

MS SQL Server 7 does support foreign keys, triggers, sub-selects, stored procedures, and just about everything else.

I hope that helps.

 

[rycamor]

I wouldn't use PostgreSQL on a Windows system, unless there was a real need for something specific, such as PostgreSQL's added datatypes and functionality, or if you need it as a development workstation to develop apps to be run on a Unix server.

PostgreSQL was written for Unix first, and can only be run on Windows through the use of a Unix-emulation library, such as Cygwin. It definitely will not perform as fast on Windows as on Unix. MSSQL is a better choice if performance is an issue.

However, PostgreSQL is free, and MSSQL is not.

One possibility: get a secondary cheap computer to run Linux or FreeBSD, and make it your PostgreSQL server. You can connect to it over the network using PostgreSQL's ODBC library, so your windows machine can still be your main PHP server. This will give you an incredibly stable, fast database for a very low price. -------------------------------------------

"Calculus is just the meaningless manipulation of higher symbols"
                          -unknown F student

 

[JimEkleberry]

Why not use MySQL? It is free and runs well on windows. The soon to be released version will also support triggers.

 

[rycamor]

MySQL is a fine database for certain purposes. I use it a lot. Mainly I like to use it in a situation where data integrity (foreign keys constraints, etc...) is not critical, or where the environment will be largely read-only. However, if you need the full features of a real RDBMS, why trust those to a database that is just now getting a beta release of some of those features?

phil123456 asked specifically about MSSQL or PostgreSQL, presumably because he knows that PostgreSQL shares more of the same features.

MySQL is just now getting the following (mostly still in beta):
-transactions
-foreign key constraints
-UNION queries
-row-level locking

MySQL is planning to release (in version 4.1):
-triggers
-subqueries
-stored procedures
-views

(also, most of the above features are/will be available only in certain table types for MySQL)

IMHO, foreign key constraints, and views are two absolutely necessary things to build a complex database application, but the rest of the list forms just the basics for a serious DB application. PostreSQL has had all that for years, and is going far beyond in current releases. -------------------------------------------

"Calculus is just the meaningless manipulation of higher symbols"
                          -unknown F student

 

[JimEkleberry]

Thank you for the informative information rycamor.