Scalability of PHP/MySQL

Anon

How does a solution with Apache/PHP/MySQL compare with a non-open-source ("professional") solution (e.g. J2EE App Server, Oracle DB, etc.) in terms of stability, scalability and performance?
Does anyone know a reliable study or information source on this?

thanks,

Bernhard.

[deleted]

What do you think of when you say 'scalability'?

PHP runs on a server, and the best it can do is share data through shared directories or network connections. More servers=more comcurrent scripts, no scalability issues there.
MySQL doesn't scale well. It has replication, but that's where it ends.

As for stability, I have never seen PHP crash anywhere. MySQL yes, that crashes slightly less often than windows, but MySQL is... well... less than good.

Anon

IBM or BEA advertise for their application servers with words like 'scalability', 'performance', etc. I was wondering if these products are a 'must' when building professional apps or if our open-source solutions are comparable or even better (like Linux vs. M$FT)

Is there any study on that out there?

Bernhard.

rrijnders

Scaleability and performance are relative terms. Any application can be "scaled" and "perfomance" can be improved with hardware and load balancing. There is a reason that the proprietary solutions don't use more measurable terms in their ads like "price" and "cost". More and more managers are going to the open source solutions because at large scales the cost drops to one-tenth that of the proprietary hardware and software.

So much for my rant...

The real question you need to ask is "what does my application require?"

If you are just serving up web pages, then any solution will do the job. You don't need BEA or Websphere just to serve pages (even IBM uses Apache for that part!). Scaling up to serve more web pages is the same for any web server; more hardware and load balancing.

Need a database? What for? If your just doing a shopping cart and using the db to store product numbers, descriptions and images; I have seen dozens of stores with thousands of items running on Linux+mySql. If you need transaction processing, even on a large scale, postgreSQL works great. If the same db is going to run your MRP and ERP solutions, you may feel more comfortable with Oracle or DB2 running on a dedicated DB server.

Do you really need an application server? As a consultant, I have seen many companies pay through the nose for J2EE compliant application servers and never write one single java bean! J2EE compliant solutions may be all the rage and may give you bragging rights at the local IS watering hole, but my sugestion is always to know what your building before buy the tools. If server side scripting will meet your needs, then implement server side scripting (PHP, ASP, JSP). You don't need Websphere or BEA for that.

If you are going to develop multi-platform, multi-tiered, enterprise level MRP/ERP applications, then that should be the design up front. Although I love IBM's Websphere product on the AS/400's, I have yet to see an installation (besides maybe Ebay) that I couldn't have done the same thing with Linux + Apache + postgreSQL + Jakarta/Tomcat.

In the end, it is going to be the comfort level of management and budget constraints that determine what you use to implement your solution.

[deleted]

amen to that Richard.