MS SQL server anyone?

Peter Lavender plaven at bigpond.net.au
Fri Aug 30 11:56:10 EST 2002


* Michael James (michael at james.st) wrote:


> I don't like the ODBC file idea.
> A system involving shared access to a file
>  (between our Linux/Solaris and their Windows systems)
>  sounds like an invitation to untraceable db-file corruption.
 
Sounds fair enough..

> Does anyone know of any glaring faults of MS SQL?
 
In what department?  Security wise, anyone who puts any database
server directly on the net iwth it's known port open is asking for
trouble.  

> Can Perl DBI and PHP work with it?
 
Yes to both, I have used DBI using the ODBC DBD and you can also use
the Sybase (I think) DBD driver as SQL Server was based on Sybase..
(if I have my databases right here).

> Does it provide reasonable robustness,
>  the ability to throw down checkpoints
>  ie: a consistent snapshot of the DB, while running,
>  or dump the DB into an ascii file of SQL commands like MySQL?

SQL Server is trying to play in the same field as DB2 and Oracle.  SQL
Server is by far a more compliant, by the ANSI SQL standard (92 I
think) than mySQL and Postgresql.  

Others who know their RDBMS' will argue, quite correctly that SQL
Server is not in the same field as DB2 and Oracle, but then you have
to access your needs/cost requirement.  SQLSvr is a very easy to
install and manage RDBMS, Oracle and DB2 are somewhat more complex,
but they solve a much different requirement set.

If given the choice I'd use SQL Svr over mySQL and Postgres any day,
simple becuase it's so easy to install and manage using the enterprise
manager and SQL servers Query Analyser.

That's not to say that I don't or won't use either postgres or mySQL,
but if you have the money for SQLServer or a license not being used,
use it... other wise where money is an issue, then mySQL or postgres
are more than suitable.. again assess your requirements for your
choice of mySQL over postgresql.

> And for the conversion from the existing foxpro 2.6 system,
>  what open source tools exist to read a Foxpro data file.
> Could they dump it into SQL that could be loaded into a MySQL/Postgress server?
> 

Personally I don't really know, but most data storage applications can
dump to CSV format or similar, then it's a matter of importing the
file into your target repository.

If that isn't an option, there should be an ODBC driver for foxpro so
maybe perl using DBI and ODBC and you do the hard work yourself... not
that it should be that hard really.. just time to write and test the
script.


Regards,

Pete.

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