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I am currently evaluating our LAN requirments as we move towards a new
enterprise.
We require db & front end and a dynamic web site.

Until recently I would have developed using:
MS SQL Server
IIS
ASP.NET
MS Access front end
MS Exchange

I find thr thought of a Linux solution appealing because of the $ savings
and the challenge although I am confident of my abilities in the MS World.

What thoughts does the group have on running Linux based solutions for the
above ?
Apache ==> Web Server
MySQL ==> db Server
PHP ==> Dyanmic website

However I am unsure of the db front end and the mail server solution ?

Would I still us MS Access, can it connect to MySQL ? is it complex to mix
MS & linux solutions as I know how well Access & SQL Server work together.

Thanks

Murphy

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Murphy wrote:

> Would I still us MS Access, can it connect to MySQL ? is it complex to mix
> MS & linux solutions as I know how well Access & SQL Server work together.

You'd probably be better off taking this to a dedicated DB forum, but here's
my 0.02 currency unit.

You can use MS Access to work with data in MySQL tables using ODBC drivers,
but you'll be better off looking for a dedicated user app to give you more
control. Also OpenOffice.org has built in MySQL support.

AMP (Apache, MySQL, PHP) setups are very common so there is lots of
documentation and other resources available, however check that MySQL can
do everything you need database wise. MySQL isn't as fully featured as
other databases, so check out some other systems like Firebird or
PostgreSQL.

Blumf

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Murphy wrote:

> I am currently evaluating our LAN requirments as we move towards a new
> enterprise.
> We require db & front end and a dynamic web site.
>
> Until recently I would have developed using:
> MS SQL Server
> IIS
> ASP.NET
> MS Access front end
> MS Exchange
>
> I find thr thought of a Linux solution appealing because of the $ savings
> and the challenge although I am confident of my abilities in the MS World.
>
> What thoughts does the group have on running Linux based solutions for the
> above ?
> Apache ==> Web Server
> MySQL ==> db Server
> PHP ==> Dyanmic website
>
> However I am unsure of the db front end and the mail server solution ?
>
>

As Blumf has dealt with the DB part I'll try to tackle the mail part.

It depends much just what you mail requirements are. The main point I'm
wondering about is that Exchange is not really a mail server, it is a
groupware server with a mail capability grafted on, and the answer to your
question depends very much on which of those facilites you are using.

There are a number of mail server packages, some of which may need to be
used in conjunction with each other to do what you want. If you need the
groupware bit then you'll probably have to go to a specialist groupware
package, there are some for OSS - mostly written in PHP and delivered via a
web server.

The other question that needs answering is what mail clients you are
contemplating. Outlook/OE will manage POP3 and IMAP but not very well
(I've just finished converting an Exchange/Outlook setup for a client and
we eventually had to ditch Outlook and move to Pegasus Mail as Outlook kept
on telling us we couldn't download bits as we 'were not online' - over a
LAN ).

I'm a newbie in Linux, but perhaps my background on MS would help in giving you some points to consider.

It's largely depends on the requirement of the web application you have. So please don't mind me if I made a mistake here.

For the $ saving wise, without leaving your skills in MS behind, perhaps this may work for you:

Web Server:
Apache works good, with ASP.NET support. So, you can still use ASP. Recoding whole web application, by migrating from ASP to PHP could be a nightmare. I'm yet still to try it myself whether or not ASP works smoothly, though. I'm newbie, remember.

Mail:
I suppose you only need to send email from your web application? If so, you can use some simply SMTP servers available in Linux. Even if you need to provide POP,IMAP,SMTP, it's still available. My office uses Linux for email server. It's setup by the IT guy (uhh, I'm IT guy too, just that at the moment not doing network job). You see, that's why I want to learn, too.

Frontend DB:
Relying on Ms Access as front end db for its features would be something you need to consider changing. You should look for alternative, perhaps ..NET application compatible or something, that can fulfill your web application requirements. Frankly, Yukon new features won't be supported by Ms Access, too.
However, if you just use Ms Access during development, then you shuold consider learning SQL syntax more thoroughly.

Database server:
If your web application if database driven, I suggest not to use mySQL. It's very limitted and not feature rich. For instance, ver4.0 didn't support nested SELECT, which quite commonly used, I guess.
If I may suggest, you can use Yukon Express (SQL Server 2005 Express). It's free, but with limitation of max. 4GB per database. If your web application won't have data any nearer to 4GB, you may consider it.

Overall, you save $ on the CAL lisences for IIS (web connections), on the SQL Server license, on Email server license, Win2K or Win2K3 server license.

Let me know if you have better ideas. What you are doing is what I have in mind of doing

--
chency

"Murphy" <murphy@nospam.com> wrote in message news:HCcwd.74737$K7.3436@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
|I am currently evaluating our LAN requirments as we move towards a new
| enterprise.
| We require db & front end and a dynamic web site.
|
| Until recently I would have developed using:
| MS SQL Server
| IIS
| ASP.NET
| MS Access front end
| MS Exchange
|
| I find thr thought of a Linux solution appealing because of the $ savings
| and the challenge although I am confident of my abilities in the MS World.
|
| What thoughts does the group have on running Linux based solutions for the
| above ?
| Apache ==> Web Server
| MySQL ==> db Server
| PHP ==> Dyanmic website
|
| However I am unsure of the db front end and the mail server solution ?
|
| Would I still us MS Access, can it connect to MySQL ? is it complex to mix
| MS & linux solutions as I know how well Access & SQL Server work together.
|
| Thanks
|
| Murphy

Blumf wrote:
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>
> Murphy wrote:

> MySQL isn't as fully featured as
> other databases, so check out some other systems like Firebird or
> PostgreSQL.

Have to agree with you here. We've just started using Firebird for a
medium-to-large project, and after working with it for a few weeks I'm
amazed that it isn't more commonly used. And not only is Firebird more
fully-featured than MySQL - its licensing for commercial use is
noticeably more open than is MySQL's. Have had good experiences with
PostgreSQL on Linux, but Firebird will also run natively on Win32, which
is an added bonus and can be handy at times during development. I've
also found it fairly easy to get PHP talking to Firebird, though I did
have to recompile PHP with Interbase/Firebird support (fairly trivial).
Shannon

Blumf wrote:

> MySQL isn't as fully featured as
> other databases, so check out some other systems like Firebird or
> PostgreSQL.

What are some things that these databases offer that MySQL does not?

Thanks,
Jeffrey

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Jeffrey Froman wrote:
> Blumf wrote:
>
>
>>MySQL isn't as fully featured as
>>other databases, so check out some other systems like Firebird or
>>PostgreSQL.
>
>
> What are some things that these databases offer that MySQL does not?

IIRC,
- - referential integrity
- - two phase commit
- - 'transaction' support (although MySQL is supposed to have this in it's
current release)


- --

Lew Pitcher, IT Consultant, Enterprise Data Systems
Enterprise Technology Solutions, TD Bank Financial Group

(Opinions expressed here are my own, not my employer's)
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Lew Pitcher wrote:

> - - referential integrity
> - - two phase commit
> - - 'transaction' support (although MySQL is supposed to have this in it's
> current*release)

Thanks Lew.

As far as I can tell, postgres does not support two-phase commit either.
This todo list updated yesterday notes that two-phase commit as a pending
"exotic" feature:

http://developer.postgresql.org/todo.php

Firebird apparently does support two-phase commit, so if this feature is
needed, it looks like Firebird is the way to go.

As for referential integrity and transaction support, recent releases of
MySQL support both.

Jeffrey

Murphy wrote:

>I am currently evaluating our LAN requirments as we move towards a new
>enterprise.
>We require db & front end and a dynamic web site.
>
>Until recently I would have developed using:
>MS SQL Server
>IIS
>ASP.NET
>MS Access front end
>MS Exchange
>
>I find thr thought of a Linux solution appealing because of the $ savings
>and the challenge although I am confident of my abilities in the MS World.
>
>What thoughts does the group have on running Linux based solutions for the
>above ?
>Apache ==> Web Server
>MySQL ==> db Server
>PHP ==> Dyanmic website
>
>However I am unsure of the db front end and the mail server solution ?
>
>Would I still us MS Access, can it connect to MySQL ? is it complex to mix
>MS & linux solutions as I know how well Access & SQL Server work together.
>
>Thanks
>
>Murphy
>
A LAMP solution -- Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP -- would be a good idea...
depending.

You're going to have to do some work -- moving from Access to an SQL
data base management system may not be trivial; not in terms of
performance (almost any relational data base management system [RDBMS]
will vastly out perform Access), but more in terms of design. When you
migrate to or do a redesign of an RDBMS, you really need to pay
attention to the basics. If you've done a good job of developing your
schema and you've got an efficient data base design now, migrating the
schema and your tables content to, say, MySQL will not be difficult. On
the other hand, if you've got a mess, well, you've got a mess that
you'll have to clean up before you can really do much of anything. My
experience has been that most (not all by any means, but most) Access
implementations leave a great deal to be desired in terms of efficient
RDBMS design and require redesign work (frequently a lot of redesign
work) before a successful migration can be carried out. One basic
requirement is that you speak SQL fluently or you'll get nowhere quickly
-- if you don't have a good grasp of efficient table design and query
performance, you'll have a great deal of trouble no matter what RDBMS
"engine" you decide to go with.

There is nothing "wrong" with MySQL. It's fast, it's efficient, and it
does everything you would expect from an RDBMS. MySQL works well with
PHP (either 3.x, 4.x, or 5.x) and PHP works well with HTML and Apache
(and all of them work well with UNIX/Linux). What none of them are is
"click and drool," which seems to be a tremendous down side in the MS
world. The fact is, you need to give serious thought to your data base
design without caring what the engines are in front of that design:
stick to standard HTML (which means you build web pages that do not rely
on, heaven help you and your customers, Active-X), stick to ANSI and ISO
standard SQL, and figure out what to do with PHP in between the web page
and the data base (PHP is just a query - response interface between HTML
and SQL, not an end-all, be-all like Access tries [and fails] to be).

When you say "mail," what do you mean? For your internal users -- look
hard at Mozilla or Firefox and Thunderbird. For mass mailings -- Linux
comes with it, sendmail works just fine (and interfaces with PHP pretty
easily).

When you talk about "dynamic website" (if I understand what you mean by
that) go look at Amazon.com and Ebay.com -- they're both standard HTML
in front of PHP in front of an RDBMS (no, not MySQL in Amazon's case,
but you can't afford a stripped-down custom Oracle like they can). Look
at the source for their web pages (Ctrl-U in Mozilla or Firefox) and see
some of what they do. Get familiar with style sheets while you're at it.

One thing you do want to do, if you're going to bite the bullet, is
avoid like the plague any "vendor extensions;" i.e., if it's not ANSI or
ISO standard, don't do it (because it will come back to haunt you and
your customers). If you haven't learned that lesson in the MS world,
learn it well before you migrate to the UNIX or Linux world. One thing
you should avoid in an RDBMS is stored procedures and triggers -- these
look like they're convenient (a trigger event causes a stored procedure
to execute), but they can be the death of you in a dynamic data base
with a lot of hits coming from a web server (read up on them and test,
test, test before you ever think about implementing these things); the
sizzle is a lot better than the steak.

You can get to MySQL (and most other RDBMS') with ODBC drivers -- if you
like pain and agony and enjoy reinventing the wheel periodically, that
is. Basically, go one way or go the other but don't try to mix the two
-- in the real world, trying to front an RDBMS with MS stuff is not a
good idea. Build your HTML and PHP applications to the way you want them
and forget about fooling around with MS, you'll be happier.

Bear in mind that the UNIX and Linux philosophy is that a program or
utility does one thing and does it well -- shoot for that and you'll
have a system that will be much, much easier to maintain and improve.
Your goal in life is no telephone calls at three in the morning; a LAMP
implementation might cost you a little in the beginning but it will pay
off in uninterrupted sleep.

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 07:13:29 -0800, Jeffrey Froman wrote:

> Blumf wrote:
>
>> MySQL isn't as fully featured as
>> other databases, so check out some other systems like Firebird or
>> PostgreSQL.
>
> What are some things that these databases offer that MySQL does not?

The big ones that Postgres offers are rollback transactions
and stored procedures.

--

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.