why does mysql have to act as service?

scuzzo84

Why cant php use mysql as storage like how php can use a flat text file as storage? The flat text file doesnt need to run as a service but why does mysql have to?

bpat1434

mySQL doesn't have to run as a service. You have a choice to start it manually each time your server starts, or run it as a service in Windows so that it automatically starts up every time you restart your server.

And you're comparing apples and apes here. Flat-file storage is a group of text files holding information. So you're retrieving info as you go, and there's not much data manipulation/upkeep needed. All database servers (mySQL, MS Access, PostgreSQL) require their core to be running so that they can store information in a table. Plus they call on their own internal functions to manipulate and validate data in the tables. So mySQL and other databases are really elaborate programs for storing information. And in being a program, it has to run in order for it to be used.

Make any sense to you?

~Brett

thorpe

Just have to corect something in Bpat's post. MS access is not a database server, and no, it does not haver to run as a service. It works in much the same way as Sqlite does by providing an interface to an internal storage file. Mysql, Postgres and numerous other database servers, are, just that, servers.

bpat1434

Oopps... did I say MS Access? I meant MSSQL Server. Good eye thorpe.

~Brett

jazz_snob

scuzzo84 wrote:
Why cant php use mysql as storage like how php can use a flat text file as storage? The flat text file doesnt need to run as a service but why does mysql have to?

I think its not a stretch to say that the I/O services php talks to when you call fwrite(), IS in fact a service, and if it wasn't "running" you wouldn't be able to write or read files. So files and DBs are both services, just with different interfaces.