Just curious.

Got to add more options

I use Oracle 9i/10g at work. For my personal site, its Postgresql or Derby (depending on what I'm doing). When I build Tomcat live CD's I use HypersonicSQL. I even have to bang away on DB2 every once and a while.
and, I am definitely NOT a db guy.
Developers just have to learn to talk to lots of things

Wow, I didn't know anyone still used db2!

Hey, you'll get a kick out of this, but we have 3 SQL Servers at work, with machine names of db1, db2, and db3. I told the systems guy we can't name our Microsoft database server the name of an IBM database product, but they weren't very impressed, and I guess they had a point - no one has ever got confused.

What happened to Sybase?
And why can't we have more than one option.

Mike

Okay, can anyone tell me how to edit the poll after issuing it? I was thinking the same thing myself, about how sometimes I use Access even though 90% of the time it's SQL 2005. Multiple options would really make sense here, although I was more curious about which is most popular, that's kind of a limited world view, huh? I'm really wondering who voted Oracle and to hear about more of that. I've never had occasion to use Oracle before. I know it's really powerful in a lot of ways, but I've never walked into an Oracle shop, really wonder how many of them there are?

Access mostly, occasionally MySQL and MS-SQL.

99% of sites that operate on MS-SQL could operate on Access just fine, if developers knew how to code worth a ****.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

I'm really wondering who voted Oracle ...

It was me. It was the only option in the list that I use.

IMHO, Oracle has better marketing than development. Considering a properly configured PostgreSQL server is only marginally slower and a 100K less expensive, I'd say, just pop together a cluster of them. OTOH, you are probably less likely to lose your data with Oracle.

If you want to be a DBA, then Oracle is the only way to go. Have you seen their bill rates?

Users/Shops? Everybody with money. Seriously though, practically every bank uses it, most large ecomm shops, insurance companies, the military....

Adam, you gave me the best laugh this morning.

Personally:

1) oracle 9i & 10g
2) postgresql
3) mysql (because I have to...)
4) sqlite

My favorites being postgres and sqlite.

I also do a bunch of Oracle work but must admit I don't really get much pleasure from it. I always have that nagging fear I'm going to need a manual that no-one will have. Thinking about it you can get a fair impression of what it's like to use the various databases by glancing at the manuals in the technical book shops.

Oracle has 2 complete book shelves of manuals dedicated to it - each book covering some obscure corner of Oracles world that no sane man would visit. The picture on the front reminding you of some vague corporate logo.

MS SQL Server usually has 4 books - each one exactly the same and covering everything in a nice simple manner. The picture on the front is either a some young bloke trying to grow a beard or some other tool.

Sybase - it should come after R or perhaps under D for database but there doesn't appear to be any books at all. Is it going out of fashion after all these years or is it really that easy to use?

MySQL - usually bundled together with another topic MySQL and PHP, Linux Apache MySQL and PHP, MySQL and bread making etc. The picture on the front appears to be the son of the SQL Server bloke - he must of finally scored with one of the secretaries.

Mike

Sybase (10 years) - MS SQL Server (6 years) - Oracle (4 years) - MySQL (3 years)

SQL
SQLite
MySQL
and Access

Paul, I'm actually serious. I've built sites that get about 100,000 - 120,000 page views per month using Access as the backend and it doesn't even put a strain on the server.

Would I use it for anything on the scale of say Google? Hell no. But Access can do a lot more than people give it credit for.

On average, that's 167 page views per hour. 120,000 / 30 = 4,000 per day, and then we divide it by 24 hours. Of course I bet you get more traffic at lunch than 3 am. But that gives us a very rough benchmark.

We don't know how much database interaction each page view needs, or what type. But we're talking 3 per second on average, and probably double or more in the day.

True, John. And what also needs to be factored in is that I have at least 4 sites that are in that traffic range on my server, plus a bunch of others with smaller traffic ranges. My very crude estimate per month would be about 1,000,000 page views per month for the sites I have on my server running off of a series of Access databases. That also doesn't take into account the couple of sites I have that run off MySQL (e.g. the blog, at around 28,000 page views per month) and SQL Server (although the SQL Server in my case is a separate server so the resource isn't as intensive.)

I honestly can't remember the last time my server needed to be stopped or rebooted for something other than a Windows patch, but it's been a while (I'd say at least 6-8 months).

Explicative!!! Four times that? A million ( 556 per minute ) pages a month!

I gotta admit, I don't have much respect for Access, but this just blows my mind.

Could you elaborate a little on what you did, or what people do wrong that you didn't, or something like that? It's like I just saw someone win the Daytona 500 in a Ford Pinto.

There are three very simple keys:

1) Timestops <% %>. Limit those to maybe 6-10 per page (2 per include file and four for the page itself.)

2) Subs to open/close a database connection on the fly, and destroy any objects. I only create open the database connections when I need to retrieve data, and free up the resources and explicitly set them to nothing otherwise. This is very key.

I plan on expanding on this in a future blog post, but I need time to prepare it so that people will understand it.

3) When I design an Access database for the web, I put nothing but tables into it. This is probably a minor factor or not a factor at all, but why bog down an Access db with things like queries, reports, etc. that you won't use?