Database Comparisons

[Guest]

I'm building a business website that when all said and done will have around 20,000 products or more.

I've found what appears to be the perfect shopping cart program to handle the inventory database and quite a bit of the work.

http://www.ecommercetemplates.com

I've already got an appearance template set up, so all I need is to download the generic code to add their program's functionality.

They've got two versions to download, and a clear list of pro's and cons has not yet appeared in any of my search engines.  They've to an ASP version that uses an Access database, and a PHP version that has the script for a MySQL database.

Access vs. PHP.  Anybody that can help me clear this one up?

[bnbwalt · Accepted solution]

Access is a "personal use" database and not suitable for business use.  If you are going to deploy to a hosting site, most do not support Access but do support MySQL.  Access is not robust enough to support a product size of 20,000 items unless you have a single table and a very low hit rate and even then, I would not highly recommend its use.

I think you will find that most who respond will point you in the direction of using MySQL and PHP.  There is nothing wrong with using ASP, although again most hosting services do not support ASP, but the typical solution for sites that have dynamic data from database use the combination of PHP and MySQL.  Also, if you going to use Dreamweaver as your development platform, it supports PHP and MySQL a bit better than ASP and any other database.

Walt

B & B Photography

[Guest]

Thanks much!  I suspected that would be the case as SQL was specifically designed for something like that as well as performance on a server, but the current admin wanted me to double check because Access has more plentiful support features.  Can only learn if you're willing to ask, right?

[bregent]

>I suspected that would be the case as SQL

>was specifically designed for something like

>that as well as performance on a server,

I'm not sure what you mean here. SQL stands is structured query language. Are you referring to MySQL? MSSQL? Most databases in use these days are SQL databases.

In any case, I agree with Walt.  I work for a major DBMS company but I use Access everyday for lots of tasks. But it is not suitable for anything other than small websites with low hit rates. The fact that this company is offering an ASP/Access ecommerce solutions is a bit suspicious and I would question how good their product and support is.

[Guest]

That would be an excellent point.  As far as I can tell, many people (like a few that I work with) are still convinced that Tables are the standard for page layout, and Access is the leading database solution for anything because it's easy to use and has lots of support.  No, I have no way of backing the theory that they sell it because people still buy it (you'd be amazed how many full on amateurs want to do this stuff and build a website not even knowing there's such a thing as HTML, let alone what it's used for -- unless you already know).  From a marketing standpoint, morals be darned, if people would pay me money to have it there, I'd have it there.  If there's money in idiots like that, someone might as well collect....

It's using MySQL btw, sorry about forgetting to mention that.

In terms of support.....reading through their forums it looks like it's pretty inclusive, lots of specific questions with walkthrough answers, and seems to cover most things (almost comparable to these ones).  Unless I'm reading it all wrong, it looks like they even include some of those annoying little like search engine compatibility.  http://www.ecommercetemplates.com/help/search-engine-friendly.asp#title  Won't lie, these do look a little primitive, but they're not hard to change.

So far my theory is that even if it does need some tweaking it still saves me a headache trying to build the database for all that, then filling the database with PHPMyAdmin, and then figuring out the shopping cart(along with monthly costs and whatnot).  If it'll save me 6 months of work to spend one or two tinkering, I'll live with that.

I'm just looking for that kind of criticism before I turn my bosses into those above mentioned idiot dollar $igns....they'll turn me into the idiot with the walkin papers if I did that.

What else comes to mind that I might not have noticed?