| As is the case with development languages, a
developer's familiarity generally determines preference.
And as is the case with development languages, cost
and performance are the only quantifiable measurements.
MySQL is an affordable database to purchase, however,
it is commonly believed to be more difficult to
maintain, slower, and less powerful than both
SQL Server and Oracle. Since MySQL does not participate
in the tests conducted by TPC (Transaction Processing
Performance Council), an independent analysis firm
that gauges the performance of databases, it cannot
be compared to other systems such as SQL Server
and Oracle. While Oracle has consistently outperformed
SQL Server, the licensing costs place it out of
reach of small and medium sized businesses. Oracle
is generally intended for large-scale, enterprise applications
and is generally not offered by web hosts.
While both SQL Server and MySQL are viable options
for small and medium sized websites, .Net comes
with native support for SQL Server, making it easier
to implement .Net solutions using SQL Server, while
increasing performance due to the native interface.
SQL Server is also more widely used, and therefore,
it is easier to find development support.
|
Feature |
SQL Server 2005 |
Oracle 10g |
MySQL 5.0 |
|
Independent Performance Benchmarks |
2nd
Place |
1st
Place |
Does not participate
- intended for small to medium sized systems |
|
Independent Analysis of Price/Performance
Ratio |
1st
Place - licensing is 25% the cost of Oracle
|
Unknown |
Does not participate
- commercial licenses are cheaper than SQL
Server |
|
Cross Platform Compatible |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Fully Relational - affects data storage,
retrieval and integrity |
Yes |
Yes |
Somewhat -
does not support foreign key constraints |
|
Language |
Transact-SQL
- considered easy to use and more powerful
than MySQL Dialect |
PL/SQL - considered
more powerful than Transact-SQL but more
difficult to use |
MySQL Dialect
- difficult to use with limited power |
|
Maintainability |
Easy |
Difficult |
Difficult |
|
Open Source |
No |
No |
Yes |
|
|
