php.net

[Jeremy W.]

Well, since nobody actually recommends Access, I'm at a loss as to how it got into the conversation ...

[M. Johansson]

Originally posted by siteguru
There's an old adage that goes You get what you pay for. I would say that with mySQL you get a heck of a lot more than what you pay for!

After all, it is free isn't it? Would some of you rather use MS Access?

If mySQL is a 3-wheeler VW Beetle then MS Access is Del-boy's Reliant Robin van after it has been through the crusher! (UK folks will know what this means ).

MS Access is a pretty fine database. Just not as a backend for web sites. It's all about what software is well designed to do. mySQL, for instance, works very well for web sites that reads a lot of data but writes very little, such as your average content site. Where mySQL croaks, though, is when your users get many and starts to insert lots of stuff.

[siteguru]

To Jeremy W.

By firepages
If you dont recall those 'PHP is good at forms' days I can remind you, if we all beleived the 'experts' and those with CS degrees PHP would still be 'FI' and MySQL would not work.

That was the first mention of mySQL - neither a recommendation nor a disapproval. And this arose from a discussion regarding PHP.NET. So why should my mention of Access be any more or less relevant than this? Why didn't you berate any others who followed the mySQL theme and moved the thread away from the original topic?



To M. Johansson - I agree, but most web uses of mySQL rely on SELECTS rather than INSERTS/UPDATES/DELETES.

[dhtmlgod]

Access was never concieved to be used as a database to run a site with, it's never been designed to. The fact that it can, and doesn't that bad a job really, gives the lil blighter some credit.

[Jeremy W.]

Ian: actually I was going to split the thread when the discussion had finished

[siteguru]

I understand, oh powerful one

[M. Johansson]

Originally posted by siteguru
To M. Johansson - I agree, but most web uses of mySQL rely on SELECTS rather than INSERTS/UPDATES/DELETES.

Yes, that's the very reason it's so darn popular. The problem is that people have a tendency to use it for a lot of stuff it's not that good for (read: forums). I wish mySQL wouldn't be such an obvious choice all the time - it would be pleasant if SOME hosts used Postgres or something, at least.

[HarryF]

Last I read (but I'm losing my memory ) they were planning stored procedures in MySQL 4.x. And aren't foreign keys available now with one of the other table types like Innodb? Also seem to remember MySQL were dead against triggers, due to the processing overhead.

Know MySQL is lacking many things but from what seems to being going on, MySQL AB (the developers) have a very clear set of priorities they're not willing to sacrifice, speed being the #1 concern. They also seem to be going the right direction - think they'll get there eventually.

Although PostGreSQL is technically a better alternative, think the reason for MySQL's success is being clearly backed by a company.

Either way it is amusing that so many people fly in the face of reason and use it despite it's flaws. Normally only Microsoft get that kind of user...

[Jeremy W.]

No no, because some people even try and include Java in PHP, or use PHP for desktop apps.

[firepages]

"The problem is that people have a tendency to use it for a lot of stuff it's not that good for (read: forums). "

no don't

forums are perfect territory for MySQL , probably 99/100 access's are reads , and writes are hardly transactional in nature.

Where it does go pear shaped is when it is misused, like with early PHPBB versions which hammered the database repeatedly with literally hundreds of queries per page view for some procedures.

PostgreSQL PRE 7.* would have karked it even trying that, it may well be more than up to it now but I think MySQL was doing the job at the right time, 18 months ago there were a fair few postgreSQL hosts around but postgreSQL at that time had some major issues, that it is up to it now is another point.

[M. Johansson]

Originally posted by firepages
forums are perfect territory for MySQL , probably 99/100 access's are reads , and writes are hardly transactional in nature.

While this is not true for all forums, they generate a LOT of insert queries, which mySQL is not too good at. Ask administrators of large vBulletin boards an hear what they say. MattR, on these very forums, can testify about it - he implemented a version of vBulletin for Sybase for this very reason with great results.

[HarryF]

No no, because some people even try and include Java in PHP, or use PHP for desktop apps.

Comment noted. Easy now though J - you may end up eating these words a year from now. The PHP 5 release process has begun...

[Jeremy W.]

The point was the same though. "How could MS guys do this", when PHP guys have been doing the same thing for quite some time. Yeah, it's an over-generalization, but getting personal wouldn't help anyone

As far as PHP5, yippee We'll see what happens with it later. A better tool is still a good thing. I don't see it as a threat, since I still use PHP every day. If it's got more functionality, better speed and more database connectivity that can only be a good thing for me, not a bad thing, so why would I eat my words?

[firepages]

"No no, because some people even try and include Java in PHP, or use PHP for desktop apps"

I think those were the words it was suggested may not taste so nice in the long run

I dont think that the database support can get any better .. that would be quite hard, some may even say worse since PEAR:: DB is gonna get pushed even more with the 'mainstreaming' of PEAR.

Though I note the rewriting of MySQL for MySQL4 & ?5? ! features, I see MySQL have a working 'gamma' of mysql4 - but the stable version is still 3.23

but on that note ..

, they generate a LOT of insert queries, which mySQL is not too good at

MySQL is perfectly capable with straight INSERTS , keeping integrity during inserts and deletes is another matter but most PHP based apps are quite happy to handle that themselves.
I appreciate MattR's commentary on his MySQL experiences and that of others as well, many simply due to the fact that they were hammering MySQL on already busy shared servers, that MySQL performs so well in such circumstances is a testament to its usefulness, that Sybase/Interbase/PostgreSQL etc are more robust is not really an argument that supports the assertion that MySQL is crap



nice to see some mention of GTK in the Zend5 example blurb as well

[Jeremy W.]

I won't eat the words at all. As of the time of writing it is 100% right. Using PHP for things it wasn't meant for in this version is foolish, especially when there are better tools for the job out there.

V5? Dunno, we'll see, but I doubt PHP will be as good as Java at what Java does, and even if it is, the concept of writing twice for one job still doesnt' appeal to me.

[HarryF]

I won't eat the words at all. As of the time of writing it is 100% right. Using PHP for things it wasn't meant for in this version is foolish, especially when there are better tools for the job out there.

Foolish? If you're referring to Java, not at all. There is a problem plagueing PHP's Java extension today is actually Sun's problem. PHP by default wants to be able to to unload the Java VM at runtime using the JNI api to allow things like the Java classpath to change in PHP's environment - something Sun didn't fully implement - see jint DestroyJavaVM(JavaVM *vm);. This can be solved by adjusting PHP's environment to prevent dynamic unloading.

If you're interested in some detailed studies of PHP and Java integration see Creating Multi Tier Web Applications with PHP and also the article on PHP in an N-Tiered World in the February edition of PHP Architect. Both are pointing at PHP <> J2EE integration, PHP acting as the presentation logic layer. In practice using PHP's Java extension today means you a pretty in depth knowledge of PHP and Java. But anyone interested in using this stuff seriously will have that knowledge anyway.

V5? Dunno, we'll see, but I doubt PHP will be as good as Java at what Java does, and even if it is, the concept of writing twice for one job still doesnt' appeal to me.

It's not about PHP doing Java's job. It's about PHP doing JSP's job. One facet of J2EE is for building tiered applications where the tiers themselves run on seperate systems. A company may have it's business logic on system X in it's backoffice. The business logic code does nothing but manipulate data then hand it off to another system for display. With PHP + Java, you've got PHP doing the displaying. It's conceptually something like replacing MySQL with Java - just another source of data.

With PHP 5, integration with any other environment has been "unified" and made more stable. There's a good chance that integrating PHP with Java, COM, .NET, Corba or whatever will become something easy for all PHP developers, rather than something for a select few right the right knowhow, as is the case today.

As to PHP-GTK and building desktop apps, right now I agree it's just a novelty, not worth spending much time on. Development of PHP-GTK has been stunted by PHP 4's object model and lack of solid support for multi-threading. With PHP 5 the main problems they've had have been solved. Believe they're planning PHP-GTK 2 for release not long after PHP 5.

Many developers with PHP-GTK also want to be able to create binary versions of their apps. Work is in progress with bcompiler to make this possible...

After that, whether PHP-GTK gains acceptance will be down to tools and deployment. If it's possible to make GTK apps that are easy to install and development is supported by some IDE, methinks we'll be seeing alot more of PHP-GTK.

[firepages]

Using PHP for things it wasn't meant for in this version is foolish, especially when there are better tools for the job out there

tell me how long it would take me to learn (with any toolkit (& remembering how foolish I am)) how to connect to a local dbx style database , create excel spreadsheets from the crunched data and then upload to MySQL on a remote server.

I dont know how long it would take in any other language/toolkit, I do know that php-gtk gave me a useable interface in less than an hour (twas a simple iface to be sure ) the rest was second nature to me.

I find that a logical use of my time, the alternatives were get someone to write an app in C++ (perhaps I could have but at my level of C it would have taken days!) or .. well I dont know what else.

Thats a real case (I am working on a similar interface to a filepro database now), but there are hundreds of hypotheticals where even a simple gtk interface client-side with all the functionality of PHP to hand could move mountains so to speak without much head-scratching

As to PHP-GTK and building desktop apps, right now I agree it's just a novelty, not worth spending much time on.

ooh ,ooh, ooh

Anyway some great news for win32 users is that GtkScintilla is now fixed for win32, this gives us a ready-made text-editor widget with syntax highlighting, search and replace etc etc, + Pixbuf is supposed to be fixed soon which means we can use images other than pixmaps (which can be a pain)

With php-gtk being totally OOP (not possible with PHP I am told ?) I am soooo looking forward to decent dereferencing in V5 which is gonna save me a lot of typing, + all the other goodies which I have to learn to use

[HarryF]

ooh ,ooh, ooh

I know But would you not agree that most of the clever stuff you do in PHP-GTK right now is really "command line" PHP? I didn't go that far with the current version but the impression I had was it's too difficult (not impossible though) to put more complex Windowed apps together.

[firepages]

GTK right now is really "command line" PHP?

thats completely true ! , and the apps I mention above don't actually 'need' a GUI , they could be scheduled or run from the command line or batch script or whatever.

but just the ability for the user to click a button in a 'real' window is worth ...well its priceless to your average win32 user (have you ever tried getting a client to ping or tracert themselves ?).

winglade is available to help build an interface though I dont like it one bit, but there are bigger and better things to come I am sure.

php-mole , a complete PHP-GTK based IDE (though near impossible to use on win32) shows what can already be done with glade/php-gtk.

I would not try and build a fully-featured spreadsheet in php-gtk , that would be pointless and a waste of time, nor would I try re-invent many other apps, but there are thousands of possible uses for php-gtk where some GUI components would be a godsend even though the hard work is done via (PHP/whatever), here is where php-gtk will I think shine.

If I am wrong I am wrong (though I will have enjoyed the trip), but the fact that I can use php-gtk in its current state of development bodes well I think for the future.

[Selatos]

I dont know what they said on the second 2 pages, but I want to point out that I just meerly meant that you could call it php.net. Go back to the ASP/PHP debate and you will see where he said PHP.NET would be the only thing worth making, and its not gonna happen. but it can :-)

[HarryF]

Hmmm. Seems a PHP.NET for Mono may not be so far off...

http://www.php.net/~sterling/mono/
http://www.zend.com/lists/php-dev/200302/msg00019.html

Something for PHP 5

[Jeremy W.]

That's not PHP.NET for Mono. That's allowing access to Mono's library. Not the same thing at all really.

Personally I'm wondering how PHP.NET would be different from C# anyways. Most langauges only have syntactical differences.

[jgreen]

hey gang, new to forums... 2 questions:

1. Why do people keep wanting to compare non-compiling scripting languages to full fledged compilable programming languages? PHP is a scripting language, a very powerfull scripting language but a scripting language non the less. It is intended to make portable apps on web servers, NOT full blown applications for windows or linux. Just my observation here, if you want the power and control necessary to build high end desktop applications use a full blown compilable language.

2. In referense to the Access bit that went on earlier, I don't know 1 single reputable programmer that would use access willingly. It should be illegal to use if for more than household invenentory dbs. That is my opinion anyhow....

As for .Net, I think its another great idea from the Monolith, that will eventuall get fubared. I pray Mono works as well as .Net. I prefer open source solutions of the following reasons:
1. The tools needed to advance the state of software used on clients machines should be freely available to anyone with balls enough to use it. This is how evolution happens.

2. All this MS goodness accomplish one basic feet. It locks you into a propietary system, that either costs an a$$ load to keep up to date, or turns you into a criminal because you are forced to pirate said propietary system to keep up.

SO, bollux on MS, and to hell with .NET, gimme c++ and a gnu compiler and I'll make me linux box do new tricks. As for my webpage, I like the php SCRIPTING language, it's one of the best html parsers around

[M. Johansson]

Just my observation here, if you want the power and control necessary to build high end desktop applications use a full blown compilable language.

Like C++? While C++ is very good, developing an app with C++ is going to take significantly longer and be significantly harder to make than with the .NET framework. The key here is RAD (Rapid Application Development). That is why Java and VB is so widely used - you can develop applications very easily and very fast.

2. In referense to the Access bit that went on earlier, I don't know 1 single reputable programmer that would use access willingly. It should be illegal to use if for more than household invenentory dbs. That is my opinion anyhow....

I've never heard a bad thing about Access as a DB? It's insane to use it as a web backend, but as a customer database for small companies and the like (which is what it's designed for) I've never heard anything bad about it.

[firepages]

1. Why do people keep wanting to compare non-compiling scripting languages to full fledged compilable programming languages?

most don't , but users of `compiled` languages especially of the nouveau kind appear to think this is very l33t and will often mention it in a 'my dads bigger than your dad' sort of way despite the fact they could not compile themselves out of a cardboard box , if it makes them feel more secure then thats cool.

2 - Access is a fine tool in the appropriate environment which is as M.Johansson mentions above.

That is why Java and VB is so widely used - you can develop applications very easily and very fast.

on win32