How robust is php/mysql?

dotty

Hi,

I have a client who seems to consider php/mysql as a small project solution and that for large indepth cms and e-comm sites it would require moving to java or cgi or some programming language and larger databases.

I know that php was invented for the web so would imagine that it is the best for the web. I also know that mysql is very robust - but how robust is it? I've been building cms systems in php for about a year now and increasing my knowledge in this area and as far as I can tell - you can do just about anything with php.

Do any of the senior members or moderators of this forum have any tips on what points I could raise in support of php/mysql - or know of the best available articles. I will also do a search on this but would be interested to hear from experts on this site.

Thanks a lot

onion2k

http://www.zend.com/company/customers.php

Just point out these particular examples of who is using PHP to drive their sites:

http://www.zend.com/store/products/performance-case-study.php#lycos
http://www.zend.com/store/products/performance-case-study.php#lufthansa

6 million visitors a day? I think thats enough for most sites..

Weedpacket

Another PHP user is http://sourceforge.net/ - though their db backend is PostgreSQL, which it has to be said is a somewhat more mature product than MySQL.

planetsim

Not really anything on the technical side but I found that clients want things done quickly and as cheaply as possible actually come to think about it we all want that. PHP/MySQL offers that with careful planning a PHP Project can be completed a lot quicker than something in JSP and in most cases that Ive seen PHP normally loads a lot faster.

piersk

Doesn't Yahoo! run off PHP/MySQL?

onion2k

Originally posted by piersk
Doesn't Yahoo! run off PHP/MySQL?

As far as I know their back-end CMS systems are PHP, but the front end high volume stuff is written in C.

dalecosp

Excite's mail is/used to be *.php, witha substanial reliance on Javascript on the client side.

LordShryku

Pointing to Weedpacket's post, you may want to consider a better DB system. While MySQL does have it's perks, it also has a lot of drawbacks. PostgreSQL is a great system that covers most of these gotchas. But when most people talk about a more robust/professional DBMS, they are usually thinking Oracle. The simple truth is that regardless of what DBMS you settle on, PHP probably has great support for it.

n00854180t

I'd have to say that even with a very high volume of users, PGSQL could probably handle it. Also, because you can update the database while other queries are being run on it, it's a good choice for sites that can't afford downtime.

onion2k

Originally posted by n00854180t
I'd have to say that even with a very high volume of users, PGSQL could probably handle it. Also, because you can update the database while other queries are being run on it, it's a good choice for sites that can't afford downtime.

Doesn't MySQL have row level locking now? Assuming thats what you meant..

Sxooter

It's about more than just row locking.

MySQL's INNOdb tables, by the way, support MVCC, but let's face it, they haven't gotten the thrashing of heavy duty use that PostgreSQL has gotten running things like the .org TLD.

The real advantage PostgreSQL enjoys in enterprise class apps is things like not allowing you to insert 'abcdefghjijklmnopqrsas' into a varchar(10) and silently truncating it, or rounding down a large number to make it fit into an int4, or allowing you to FK A myisam table to an innodb table and then telling you, after a roll back, that maybe some of your data can't be recovered. It's a whole slew of differences like that that make people who know relational database theory quake with fear at the idea of putting a large transactional system online using MySQL.

Also, PostgreSQL tends to degrade under load more slowly, and with pgpool and slony for replication / load balancing, can scale to truly ginormous heights.

Add in Point in Time Recovery, available in 8.0 in the next couple weeks, and you have pretty much all the things you need for an enterprise class installation.

But PHP can handle anything. I'd put a single 4 way Xeon box with 4 gigs of ram running PHP up against a farm of J2EE boxes and still expect better performance from the PHP machines. Java is a hog, plain and simple. The only reason to go with Java is that it's easier to find enterprise developers familiar with it, and that it has a lot of cool features you can pile on top of it, like hibernate, to make it easier for developers since they now never have to touch the database directly, but hit an abstraction layer that puts all the data into a familiar ORM model.

csn

Have you ever used Tomcat Sxooter?

Sxooter

I haven't used it since the days of the java 1.2 SDK (set the way back machine Mr. Peabody) but know many folks who use it and recommend it. It's part and parcel of the most JBoss implementations.