PHP/MySQL or JSP/Oracle

[jumpthru]

Originally posted by W. Luke

Originally posted by trigger8
Nothing more than building a database for articles. I like to use PHP/MySQL to execute the integration. However, my boss has bias in any open source program, and he seems to love Java application more than anything else. I assume Oracle and JSP are the best combination so I was wondering what JSP and Oracle can do.

In my personal professional opinion, having worked as an Oracle Developer for the last 7 months, if you use Oracle for something as simple as this, you are wasting your money. Oracle could handle the job of course but it is underutilizing the machine unless you plan on getting millions of Uniques per month. The companies that use Oracle are Amazon, AltaVista (converting this year), Visa (3,000 transactions a second) and much larger companies.

3,000 transactions a second is quite a lot...

What did altavista previously use?

[Son Nguyen]

Wow, reading Wayne's post, I now see "behind the screen" stuff! Pretty interesting!
That's how big sites/firms differentiate from small ones!

p/s: Wayne, what kind of language you use with Oracle, beside SQL. Java?
<Edited by 123finder.com on 12-06-2000 at 11:03 PM>

[jumpthru]

Originally posted by 123finder.com
Wow, reading Wayne's post, I now see "behind the screen" stuff! Pretty interesting!
That's how big sites/firms differentiate from small ones!

p/s: Wayne, what kind of language you use with Oracle, beside SQL. Java?
<Edited by 123finder.com on 12-06-2000 at 11:03 PM>

Yea, that post was really really interesting, thanks for the sneak peak into that company.

BTW, wluke, do you have a personal company site? whats V.P. Internet Development - DTS Inc.?

[Karl]

That's what I like about SP, you just got a free mini consutation from Wayne and it didn't cost you a penny.

Oracle prices on power units or users (which ever you prefer) so it can work out expensive. I should have clarified myself earlier and said I was talking about the price of the server editions or Oracle.

[trigger8]

Yes, I did show Wayne's post to my boss, but he wasn't in his office so I put the ptintout on his desk.

Wayne, have you ever heard about any Java engine for Unix other than Tomcat?
<Edited by trigger8 on 12-07-2000 at 09:37 AM>

[Hierophant]

O.K. to answer some of the questions posted in here...

AltaVista used to use Microsoft SQL Server. They still do for existing services and are going to use Oracle for new Services. I learned this when I went to an Oracle DBA class in July and met people from Alta Vista, HP, Visa, Lockheed-Martin and other companies.

DTS Inc. is a company that three colleagues and I are working on starting. It will involve GeoSpatial Positioning over Wireless Devices using Digital Cellular and Satellite technologies. This is also what my sub-application mentioned above does as well. There is no public website yet as our product is in development and will be web-based.

In programming in Oracle we use PL/SQL and SQL Plus which are Oracle's embedded query languages. Our front end clients are built in Powerbuilder, Microsoft Visual C++ and Microsoft Visual Basic. We are getting ready to develop clients for Windows CE (basically a recompile) and the Palm OS. The Palm client will be in C++. After Palm we will look at Linux implementations. Palm is more important because it is a mobile application.

We looked at using Java as it would be easier to build cross-platform applications. However we decided that performance was more important than easy portability. Because of this, we are not developing in Java either on the front or backend. Our compiled applications run 10-15 times faster than they would if they were written in Java and distributed as Byte-Code.

[Hierophant]

Originally posted by trigger8
Yes, I did show Wayne's post to my boss, but he wasn't in his office so I put the ptintout on his desk.

Wayne, have you ever heard about any Java engine for Unix other than Tomcat?
<Edited by trigger8 on 12-07-2000 at 09:37 AM>

For JSP servers look at: http://www.jspin.com/home/software/serveren

Also look at the Apache.org site because I know they were working on a JSP module and I think it is available now.

[freddydoesphp]

That is true Apache JServ is available now there is also Allaire's JRun.

[Karl]

Apache JServ works very well and is pretty nippy too.

[trigger8]

I've problem installing Tomcat for Apache on my server before, so I'm not sure whether Apache Jserv would be an easy one or not.

[Karl]

Everyone I have talked to about Tomcat has had problems installing it. Apache JServ takes about 5 minutes to get working, it compiles out of the box (or should that be tar.gz?).

[trigger8]

That would be great! I'll definitely try it out.

[Kevin Yank]

For the record, you can access a MySQL database with JSP as easily as you can an Oracle database. So if your boss is hesitant about adopting Open Source solutions, go with JSP and buy a commercial support license for MySQL.

[FatPiper]

Just a question ...
On Karl's signature, it mentiones xsp. what is that?

[Karl]

XSP is XML Server Pages - It allows you to embed Java in to XML pages that are processed on the server and transformed in to whatever format you specify e.g. HTML, WML, PDF.

Servside XML is quite clever as it will autodetect the browser being used and let you select the correct XSL style sheet e.g. You may have one for WAP devices that server light weight WML, One for IE, One for Netscape.

If you want to see a demo of server side XML and XSP take a look at http://demo.kdawebservices.com/cocoon/

For more information about both visit http://xml.apache.org and look at Cocoon.

[FatPiper]

Thanks. I'll check it out sounds very useful as I would like my site to be wap accessible, but not have to do the content twice over. Maybe I can use that...

[MattR]

Just found this today -- if you're still interested I have some information on Sybase v. Oracle here:
http://sitepointforums.com/showthrea...5&pagenumber=2

Also, Sybase ASA does really great WAP.

[trigger8]

Very interesting posts! How and why Sybase is good for WAP?

[MattR]

trigger:

http://www.sybase.com/solutions/mobilewireless/

Is the Sybase site devoted to wireless / WAP / mobile internet stuff. If you want more information check that out and if you still have questions I'll be more than happy to try and answer them!

[pedershk]

trigger8, just as a reminder. MySQL does have commercial support. You can buy it from TCX/MySQL AB. Have a look at www.mysql.com.

And I'm pretty certain that you do not want to be utilizing Oracle for such a simple (pardon me, but it IS simple) application that you are trying to implement.

I'm currently developing a front-end commerce system for subscriptions to an online game (Anarchy Online).

We were going to run with Oracle because that's the database we utilize for the ingame data itself (objects, monsters, people, items, textures, everything) - but quickly found out that the amount of setup and customization involved to be able to run oracle for the billing/registration/control panel application on the web was just too much.

So. Here's our setup for this application:

• PHP 4.04pl1 on Redhat Linux 6.2
• MySQL 3.23.x with BDB transaction support, also on Linux
• Perl 5.6.0 for cron'ed transaction processing jobs (batch credit card transactions each day etc)

It's, in my opinion, a perfect example of what MySQL and PHP is able to do. We have 3 different interfaces to the application as well, one being the signup/registration process which checks and updates/inserts into about 17 different tables, a C++ application for Win32 for the billing department to support customers calling in or emailing about billing stuff, and a Web frontend (control panel) for customers to check transactions, cancel/renew subscriptions to our games (there will be more than Anarchy Online, but that's the only one now), send support feedback, etc. etc.

This is done with an array of PHP functions to look up and insert into mentioned tables. Even the C++ application utilizes PHP scripts inside little ActiveX IE5 controls to look up transactions and so forth.

Btw - this setup will handle about 30,000 financial transactions every day plus a boatload of temporary tables etc.

We've stress tested it to easy handle more than 250 transactions per second.

So. Make up your own mind. I know I've made up mine.

[Skunk]

This threadmakes fascinating reading - any more high-end application coders want to coe out of the woodwork?