Advantages of mySQL?

  • This isn’t a support request, just a question of general interest. Skip it if you wish, no problem.

    About a decade ago I did a lot of perl coding. As example, one of my big projects was to create a blog network system similar to WordPress.

    I put all my data in to text files because my skills did not include mySQL technology. This seemed to always work, and also seemed far simpler than anything to do with mySQL.

    I assume there must be some compelling advantage to mySQL (and PHP) because they dominate today’s web. I’m not arguing against that, I’m just curious. What’s the big advantage to mySQL?

    I’m guessing mySQL may be a more powerful and responsive data management system for high traffic sites. Ok, but who has a high traffic site?

    Just curious, that’s all. I’ve retired from coding, don’t really need to know.

    Thanks for anyone’s thoughts.

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  • I can’t answer the question – although I do echo the author’s thoughts!

    I set up a wiki a short while ago and, after pondering the merits of various softwares, set it up using Dokuwiki (dokuwiki.org), a ‘flat file’ wiki system which keeps all it’s data in text files.

    I’m not a coder, just a humble user jock with a smattering of html and css knowledge. But some innate logic told me that a flat file system must surely be simpler than an SQL database, and, as long as the scale didn’t get too large, just as quick and efficient.

    But I’m no logician! So I’m as curious as the more expert philbertdog is on this question.

    I’ve never read much in the way of usage statistics about WordPress – by which I mean stats. on how many really big installations use WP, as a percentage of all installations. Or how many are under 10 pages. Or what WP is most widely used for – blog or CMS or other use. Does WP itself publish any papers on such statistics?

    Again, thanks for anyone’s thoughts.

    Thread Starter philbertdog

    (@philbertdog)

    Thanks for your comments HJ, appreciate it. My guess is as follows…

    The vast majority of blogs have very little traffic. Creating content is relatively easy compared to marketing and building the audience. Most people seem happy to just see their content on the Net, and if they’re not, they typically give up before they have a significant audience. I’ve done this too many times to count myself. I can say from much experience that small traffic sites seem to work fine with their data stored in text files. That was my experience anyway.

    A relatively small number of sites have most of the traffic. So if mySQL is more powerful than text files as a storage medium that would perhaps be the tool of choice for these high traffic sites. Again, this is my guessing.

    There may well be other benefits to mySQL which I don’t know enough about to even mention. The entire web seems to have gone over to mySQL/php, and there must be some reason for that.

    On a related subject, what I learned from about a decade of coding web projects in Perl is that there’s no point in writing the first line of code unless you’re doing it for fun, or know exactly how you’re going to connect with your market. Like most webmasters I put the marketing off until the end of the project, and lived to regret that newbie error.

    I read once that real software companies spend about 85% of their time on planning, and only 15% on the coding. Don’t know if that’s true, but sounds about right.

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