Datasheet

A good management tool does far more than let you look at and edit data in tables. It enables you to cre-
ate and manage databases, configure backups, handle mirroring and partitioning, add stored procedures
and views, create database diagrams, and administer security. In this book you use the free management
studio tool that is available with SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, and you’ll learn how to use its fea-
tures as and when you need them.
What RDBMSes Are Available?
There are dozens of RDBMSes available, each with its own horde of loyal users and each with its own
take on databases. In this section, you examine a few of the more commonly used ones and learn a little
about their usage.
MySQL and PostgreSQL
MySQL (www.mysql.com) is an extremely popular RDBMS for web site creators — in part this is
because it’s an open source system, and therefore effectively free to use (although you have the option of
paying for a commercial license if you want). This makes it the ideal partner to use with other open
source software. It’s common, for example, to see web sites implemented using a combination of the
Apache web server, PHP, and MySQL.
However, as with all things free there are limitations. For a start, you’ll find it a real help to be familiar
with an array of command-line techniques, and you can’t expect installation to be as easy as running an
installer application. Also, there are a lot of things that MySQL has been able to do only recently. Up
until the latest release at the time of writing (version 5.0, released October 2005) views, stored proce-
dures, and triggers weren’t supported, among other things. The current release does include these,
although with slightly fewer features than in other implementations. There are also lower limits on
many properties of databases — such as the length of table names and such. And, more important, for
large amounts of data (100GB or more) MySQL is unlikely to be happy.
MySQL is a good RDBMS to use when learning about databases, or for the small-scale hobbyist, but
if security, scalability, performance, and reliability are issues, there are far better options. One other
thing to be aware of is that finding a GUI to use to administer MySQL can be a complex task. There
are an awful lot around, and finding one to suit you that contains all the functionality you want to
use isn’t easy.
PostgreSQL (
www.postgresql.org) is another open source RDBMS, but is aimed more at the profes-
sional user. It uses a slightly different licensing model, but is still available for free.
PostgreSQL has a slightly richer feature set when compared to MySQL, although with the release of
MySQL 5.0 there isn’t a lot of difference. There are a few relatively minor things, such as PostgreSQL
being able to partition tables. Frankly, though, if data partitioning is something you want to make use
of then an open source RDBMS probably isn’t the best option.
However, as with MySQL, cost-free availability is definitely an advantage, and many people find that
this is all they need. It is important to be aware, however, that like MySQL, PostgreSQL won’t deal with
large databases well.
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Database Fundamentals
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