Re: [cobalt-users] PERL of PHP/MySQL?

[Kris Dahl <krislists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

on 5/2/00 3:27 PM, Casselman, Chad at chad.casselman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
wrote:

> I am a PERL programmer and I am looking into setting up several (hopefully
> large) index/database driven sites.  I know a good bit about Oracle and SQL,
> but I haven't even attempted anything like that on my RAQ2.  I was wondering
> if you could give me some suggestion, or pros and cons of a PERL flat file
> DB versus the pains of installing and using PHP and MySQL.  I haven't
> installed anything on my raq other than the things from Cobalt so I am very
> new and stupid at installing things on Linux.

Well, the performance of a SQL server vs. a flat file is just no
question--MySQL will walk all over flat files.

Advantages of MySQL over flat-file:
* Easy query language
* Fast
* Don't have to worry about file locking
* Built in security
* Can eventually upgrade to another SQL server if you abastract your db
calls
* Can have off-load to a different server if need be

Now you can use Perl with MySQL if you are more comfortable doing so--using
like mod-perl with DBI and msql+mysql CPAN module.  So its doesn't have to
be PERL + FLat file vs. PHP + MySQL.  Perl and PHP would be the your choices
for a preparsing language/system and flatfile and SQL would be your choice
for data storage.

PHP is faster than standard CGI applications.  If you use mod_perl, they are
pretty much the same.  I prefer PHP because it was designed for web pages
exclusively, where PERL I feel is a great general-purpose scripting language
(that happens to do web pages pretty well).  Both would be suitable, as far
as I am concerned, its just personal preference.

But a SQL back-end vs. a flat file system is no question--go with the flat
file.  Ask the guys that are running Ultimate Bulletin Board what they think
of flat-file systems! heh.

-k