Apache and Oracle on Windows machine

manitu2002

Hello.
I'm a very newbie to database driven web applications with php capabilities.
Starting with installing apache web server and mysql I found out that mysql does NOT support foreign key mechanism. So I went up to oracle'S website trying to gather information about the possibilities running oracle under apache for windows.
So my question is if this is possible. And due to the huge amount of software oracle provides I would like to know which software I have to download.

Sxooter

The latest development source for MySQL support INNODB tables, which do support partially functionaly foreign key constraints. You should be able to find a winders version floating about somewhere.

But I'd recommend you do yourself a favor and switch to some flavor of Unix (Solaris X86, Linux, BSD) and install Postgresql. It's somewhere between MySQL and Oracle in complexity (close to MySQL really) but is a full featured database with full foreign key support (cascading deletes, et. al.) as well as the ability to run stored procedures, sub selects, partial indexes, and a myriad of other choices. it also handles heavy parallel load with many concurrent writes better than MySQL.

But Windows as a database server OS is probably not the best of choices.

manitu2002

Many thanx.
These informations contain a wide knowledge panorama for me.

MrAlaska

The simple answer to your question is yes, you can run Oracle and Apache under windows. You would download the personal version of Oracle for web development, but I think it only supports one user. If you are planning on using Oracle on a network, it is EXPENSIVE.

If you require foreign key support, I agree with Sxshooter that PostgreSQL would probably be a better alternative for you, and it does support some handy features that MySQL does not.

On the other hand, foreign keys are only needed for protecting us from ourselves. Code that is written carefully does not require foreign key support, it is a bad practice to depend on the database to validate your code. I tend to try to work with MySQL because it is the most readily available DB when looking for hosting packages.

Sxooter

Well, I'll take up the subject a bit MrAlaska, on foreign keys. They don't just protect you from yourself, they protect your data from your whole team. More than once I've had a new developer come into a project and not quite get some part of it. While this isn't so big a deal for some things, for others, like inventory systems, or payroll, financial, etc... it can be a very big deal.

If the database makes sure that the foreign key constraints are enforced, then that's one less area for a newbie to make a mistake. If you want to get rid of foreign key constraints for performance reasons, the best bet is to use stored procedures, which will make the whole update happen in a transaction as an all or nothing kinda thing. The performance of transactions with the reliability of foreign keys. Just a little more up front work, but still well worth it.

MrAlaska

When I said 'protect you from yourself' I was speaking in the context of a lone developer. Certainly if you have a team working on a project it protects you from every member of the team, and the magnitude of error increases exponentially for each member added 🙂