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16 Responses to "QotD: Database"

1. | Reply Eagle
   Posted 30 Mar 2005 at 3:32pm #
   

   My favorite database is MySQL, and I use PHP/MySQL for all of my personal web/database needs. For work, I regularly code on 4D(.com), but as a database I'm actually not too fond of it. (Compared to SQL it leaves a lot to be desired.)

2. | Reply Caleb Jaffa
   Posted 30 Mar 2005 at 3:39pm #
   

   I suppose MySQL would be my favorite. However like PHP that got me using it, I've think it was a great introduction, but now it is time to move onto something without the little gotchas and inconsistencies. Most of my web work would be just as well if not better suited to using a SQLite database, and I've been meaning to take a good look at PostgreSQL for a long time.

3. | Reply Scott
   Posted 30 Mar 2005 at 4:31pm #
   

   I really only have experience with MySQL from PHP and Perl. I'm considering doing a migration of my blog to SQLite. It just seems that for weblogging MySQL is often overkill. SQLite seems a nice compromise between the text file approach of bloxsom and the full out MySQL approach of nearly every weblog system out there.

   I know MT supports SQLite, but does anyone have real experience in migrating to it?

4. | Reply Dustin Sacks
   Posted 30 Mar 2005 at 4:41pm #
   

   MySQL, because it's generally already set up (or easy to do so) and I have become familiar with all the gotchas.

5. | Reply Ralph Scheuer
   Posted 30 Mar 2005 at 5:00pm #
   

   I cast my vote for Frontbase - excellent support, well worth the money, standards compliant, extremely fast and WebObjects' best friend. As a desktop database, FileMaker 7 is the best solution out there - extremely stable, simple enough for everybody and still powerful.

   And because we should also make some fun of other databases, here we go: Oracle? You pay per feature, per user, per Megahertz and per... anyway, far too much money for VARCHAR2s with a maximum length of, what, 4,000 characters, bwaaahahaha. MySQL? No thanks, I want a REAL database. (For those of you who think MySQL _is_ a real database, look here to have a really good laugh 😉

6. | Reply Tim Buchheim
   Posted 30 Mar 2005 at 5:51pm #
   

   MySQL, if only because I've been using it for years so I'm very familiar with it. It's easy to install and set up. It certainly isn't perfect (it has some weird quirks, and some missing features) but it works well for the simple databases I've made.

   I've been meaning to take a look at postgresql at some point, but have never gotten around to it. I'll probably be using SQLite in some future projects, given that Apple is including it in Tiger.

7. | Reply Alex Eiser
   Posted 30 Mar 2005 at 8:04pm #
   

   IBM's DB2. Of course, thats probably because I worked on it when i was at IBM... but since it doesn't run on OS X...

   Mysql would be the second choice.

8. | Reply Samual Icky
   Posted 30 Mar 2005 at 9:00pm #
   

   What, no one likes Firebird... from the website

   19-Jan-2005AMD64 Builds of Firebird 1.5.2 are recalled

   How can't you love that?

9. | Reply Philip
   Posted 30 Mar 2005 at 9:38pm #
   

   MSSQL

   (Boy am I gonna get burned for that one)

10. | Reply Erik
    Posted 30 Mar 2005 at 10:33pm #
    

    In practice, HSQLDB and Postgres. In theory, ZODB. (Theory because I've never had a chance to use it in a "real world" context.)

11. | Reply Erik
    Posted 30 Mar 2005 at 10:35pm #
    

    Oh, and "most cumbersome and inconsistent database" award goes to Oracle. Mind you, I haven't used all the RDBMSs out there, but this one really takes the cake mainly for its ubiquity. It's like Oracle feels like it doesn't have to improve its software because it already owns the enterprise market.

12. | Reply Vinay Venkatesh
    Posted 30 Mar 2005 at 10:36pm #
    

    MySQL is good. it's wide spread, easy to use, and allows Full Text indexing (a feature i've used before). On the other hand, PostgreSQL has a lot of other features that I've relied on for more enterprise solutions i've written.

    *shrug* so I couldn't really decide between the two.

13. | Reply Eric
    Posted 31 Mar 2005 at 11:39am #
    

    I'm with you on this one Philip -- both on MSSQL and the thought of getting burned 🙂

14. | Reply Paul Turnbull
    Posted 31 Mar 2005 at 6:19pm #
    

    FileMaker Pro 7.

    But then I make me living on it so I'm biased. 🙂

15. | Reply Olivier
    Posted 01 Apr 2005 at 10:54am #
    

    I love SQLite, how simple and powerful it is and how it can be embedded in an application.

    I hate FileMaker Pro because of its inability to perform medium relational queries without jumping throug hoops and because it cannot be scripted. No, dragging and dropping commands between two list views is not what I call scripting, especially when you have no variables to put results in and to pass values between databases.

    Somehow, Omnis Studio is even worse than that, and by far. It looks like an X11 app, uses global variables to browse records, uses a cryptic syntax with dollar signs before every other word, with the same drag and drop so-called scripting, is unable to perform simple relational queries on the built-in database, requiring you to install an SQL server for that and its documentation is one of the few I know that have a negative SNR (hundreds of pages, not a single useful one).

16. | Reply Alain
    Posted 16 Apr 2005 at 4:28pm #
    

    For the moment my choice would be MySQL that I am using with PHP. But I am considering more Cocoa and Objective-C development and the MySQL API is not so obvious to use. Since most of my work is about data analysis, I am migrating to SQLite. The interface with Cocoa is much easier to implement (QuickLite) and of course the data access through PHP is at least as efficient than MySQL.