Is php what I should be using?

vvhitekid2

I need to open a mysql database and check a certain field against a directory of files I have. In this case, I need to scan through directories (and sub directories) of MP3 files, and a sql table which includes all of the information about the mp3 (artist, album, year... etc), and the name of the file. I need to output a list of all the mp3 files I don't have that are in the database, and vise versa, the mp3s I don't have in the database. I figured PHP would be a perfect place to start on this project. Am I wrong? Are there easier ways to accomplish this? Additionaly, I have more than 100,000 mp3s to do this to. Is there anything I should keep in mind just due to the extreme size of the directories and database?

Thanks for any advice!

greg252

PHP is built for this sort of thing.
Depending on the server load, results may load slow.
I would index key fields.

I know that mysql is not perfect, anyone have any idea when to move to something like Oracle? (-num of records, -num requests)

vvhitekid2

Thanks for the reply - and thats an excellent question. Somone mentioned Oracle to me, but having absolutly no experience with it, I wasn't sure. Any thoughts?

planetsim

Oracle to my knowledge costs money... and its not cheap.. i heard its quite expensive...

but im not exactly sure if thats true or not...

greg252

I think you'll be fine with mySQL. I've head of 1,000,000 records. I was curious if anyone has a "rule of thumb" for moving to an EXPENSIVE db server.
Just priced Oricle, looks like $15,000 per site.
I think I'll stick with mysql until it blows up.

bretticus

As far as using PHP, you should be good to go (if you have 100,000 files to scan this will be expensive with pretty much any scripting language you use. However, if it's Web based PHP is a sure bet!)

As far as MySQL, well, this depends on how much querying you're planning to do. If you're looking for the record that has a file id, we'll say, of "on-top-of-old-smokie.mp3" so you can return some information about it, no problem, 100,000 records shouldn't wipe you out. If you're planning on returning data from 100,000 records with each query to provide data for parsing with PHP, well, I'll just say, try it.

Again, depends on what you wanna do. Just food for thought...when MySQL 4.0 comes out of beta, it will rock! I've seen bench marks where it rivals Oracle easy.

matto

as far as the db people in my company argue, the benefit of oracle will become evident when the database grows very large. oracle provides sophisticated optimization possibilities for huge amounts of data.

friends of mine are running a news web portal with thousands of articles in it since 1999 - based on mysql, and it still works fine.

for small and regular projects we also use postgresql which is fairly good and stable.

regarding web applications, one definitive argument for mysql is the limit clause which AFAIK all the other databases don't support. (imagine oracle which is destined at laaarge tables and has no limit clause!!)

furthermore, we frequently curse oracle because of its crappy sqlplus shell and the incredible hassle when setting it up for linux. hanging installers, unexpected non-compatibilities, tricky java connectivity ...

edwardsbc

The most "expensive" (time consuming) part of the script you describe will be walking the file system directories. Compared to that, almost any database will be faster than scanning 100,000 files off of a disk.

mySQL can easily handle millions of records, and is particularly good at fetching results for simple queries. If you need to make lots of concurrent updates and inserts to your database, you may want to consider another system with more robust locking and transaction systems. (I do hear however, mySQL 4 will be much improved in these departments as well.)