Webinar – Hardware Considerations for Database Performance Optimization

posted on November 17, 2021

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Optimizing database performance is essential for seamless application delivery. Poorly written queries, missing indexes, and overall database design issues can cause failures and application bottlenecks. Degraded performance can also be caused by hardware capacity issues, i. e. lack of CPU, memory, storage, and network resources. Hardware-level database optimization will be the focus of our live […]

What is DBaaS? Should you use it?

posted on September 26, 2021

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Learn more about DBaaS → https://ibm.biz/BdfgvG Check out Cloud Databases on IBM Cloud → https://ibm.biz/Bdfgvg DbaaS, or Database as a service is but what are the advantages or disadvantages of DBaaS? Is it right for your next project? In this video Bradley Knapp provides an overview of the concerns that might drive you to use […]

How to use Flexible Server in Azure Database for MySQL | Azure Tips and Tricks

posted on August 3, 2021

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In this edition of Azure Tips and Tricks, learn how to use Flexible Server in Azure Database for MySQL. For more tips and tricks, visit: https://aka.ms/azuretipsandtricks Get started with 12 months of free services and $200 USD in credit. Create your free account today with Microsoft Azure: https://aka.ms/att/free Choose the right MySQL Server option in […]

How to get started with Azure Cosmos DB built-in notebooks | Azure Portal Series

posted on May 4, 2021

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In this episode of the Azure Portal “How-to” series, learn how to use Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB’s built-in C# and Python notebooks. We’ll show how to get started, use notebooks to visualize and analyze your data, and share your notebooks with others. Try out these features in the Azure portal: https://portal.azure.com Keep connected on Twitter: […]

What’s the Difference Between SQL and MySQL?

posted on May 3, 2021

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SQL Server is owned by Microsoft.

The SQL Server dialect of SQL is called T-SQL, or Transact SQL. It adheres to the ANSI standard fairly well. It is fully ACID compliant, and Microsoft has been quite aggressive in recent years to continue to add features to stay competitive with other RDBMSs in addition to the foundational elements that most every RDBMS has.

From a development perspective, these recent features include window functions, the PIVOT & UNPIVOT clauses, the OFFSET FETCH clause that extends ORDER BY for pagination, table partitioning, columnstore indexes, data compression, filtered indexes (indexes with a WHERE clause), Common Table Expressions (CTEs), temporary tables, and more.

From a database administration perspective, SQL Server offers Maintenance Plans (to manage backups), Policy-Based Management (used to enforce standards & policies across a fleet of database servers), Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), Resource Governance, a built in ETL tool (SSIS), built in reporting & analytiics tools (SSRS & SSAS) and more. There is a very active community of SQL Server developers and administrators, so it’s not difficult to find good talent.

SQL Server has traditionally been installed only on Windows servers, but Microsoft recently announced that SQL Server 2016 and beyond can be installed on Linux as well. Should be interesting to hear about how that goes.

Aside from the Developer and Express editions of SQL Server, you must pay licensing costs, which can be quite high.

There is a rich community of SQL Server DBAs & developers out there. Most SQL Server professionals are able to work as committed DBAs & developers, as it seems the businesses that implement SQL Server tend to be larger than those who implement MySQL, and have the budgets. This last statement is a huge generalization.

MySQL:

MySQL is considered open source, it is currently owned by Oracle, which occurred via the acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2010.

MySQL has it’s own dialect of SQL, which is similar to most other RDBMSs, and adheres to the ANSI standard fairly well. MySQL has 9 storage engines (most other RDBMSs offer only 1). If you want ACID compliance, you must choose the InnoDB storage engine, as none of the other engines provide ACID compliance. InnoDB supports transactions and foreign keys, which in my opinion are essential. MySQL does not support Window Functions and Common Table Expressions, and many other convenient development features that SQL Server does. That doesn’t mean you can’t do what you need to, but rather that you must use a different (often more cumbersome) solution. MySQL does support temporary tables, but for some reason you cannot refer to the same temporary table twice in the same SELECT statement, which is not the case with SQL Server. This limitation with temporary tables can cause you to double or triple your memory usage for the same data set, depending on what you’re trying to do.

In full disclosure, I haven’t done much MySQL administration like I have with SQL Server, so I can’t speak to the administration features of MySQL.

MySQL Can be installed on Windows, Linux, and a few other operating systems and it's supported by most web hosting service providers.

Although MySQL is open source, if you want support from Oracle, I hear licensing costs are similar to those of Oracle (I can’t confirm this from personal experience).

In general, it seems to me that MySQL can be a fine choice to support the applications you need to build. And it can be very appealing due to being open source. I have found it to be more clunky to use compared to SQL Server, mostly due to the lack of development features in comparison to SQL Server.

The type of developer I have seen with MySQL experience is more of the web developer type. I think this is because you see smaller shops that like the idea of open source (free) database implementations. This doesn’t mean there are no full time, committed MySQL DBAs, but in general, the MySQL expert seems to wear more hats, and be in a more “startup” type of environment.

How to develop apps with Microsoft Azure Database for PostgreSQL | Azure Tips and Tricks

posted on April 21, 2021

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In this edition of Azure Tips and Tricks, learn how to develop apps with Azure Database for PostgreSQL using best practices. For more tips and tricks, visit: https://aka.ms/azuretipsandtricks Get started with 12 months of free services and $200 USD in credit. Create your free account today with Microsoft Azure: https://aka.ms/att/free Learn about Azure Database for […]

How to Create a MySQL Database Using the cPanel API

posted on April 19, 2021

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Learn how to utilize the command line to create a MySQL Database using the cPanel API. Here are the commands that are used in the video: Create the database: uapi –user=exampl3 Mysql create_database name=db_name (Replace “exampl3” with your cPanel username and “db_name” with the name you would like to give to the database.) Create the […]