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.

What is the Fastest Way to Back Up a MySQL Database?

posted on May 1, 2021

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If you want it to be fast to minimize the time it impacts your production traffic. In that case, the best solution is to run backups on a replica. That will have zero impact on your production traffic (except that you need to enable the binlog on the master, which has a nonzero load on I/O). Any locking or pausing caused by the backup will only affect the replica. After the backup is finished, the replica will resume replicating changes and it will catch up.

You should be concerned not only with the speed of backup, but the speed of restore. Several other answers have suggested mysqldump, but restoring a backup created with mysqldump runs thousands of CREATE and INSERT statements contained within the backup. This can take hours, depending on your hardware and the size of your databases.

Percona XtraBackup (http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-xtrabackup/) is a very good alternative, because it's faster than mysqldump to create the backup (except in a couple of edge cases), and the format of the backup can literally be used to replace the data directory; you can restore it as fast as you can rsync the files into place.

Finally, I want to remind you to verify your backups. I've known some businesses that had an emergency and went to restore from their backup, only to discover that their last six months of backups are unusable for some reason. The best way to verify the backup is to try restoring it on a test server, and then run a few ad hoc queries to confirm it restored the data you expect it to. And of course, you can always ask your web host service provider to do that for you.

How Do I Connect to a MySQL Database in PHP?

posted on May 1, 2021

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PHP 5 and later can work with a MySQL database using:

    MySQLi extension (the "i" stands for improved)
    PDO (PHP Data Objects)

Earlier versions of PHP used the MySQL extension. However, this extension was deprecated in 2012.

MySQLi Installation

For Linux and Windows: The MySQLi extension is automatically installed in most cases, when php5 mysql package is installed. Some web hosts offer to do all the technical things for you.

For installation details, go to: http://php.net/manual/en/mysqli.installation.php

PDO Installation

For installation details, go to: http://php.net/manual/en/pdo.installation.php

Uncomment the mysql/mysqli extension in php.ini

Open a Connection to MySQL

Before we can access data in the MySQL database, we need to be able to connect to the server:

Example (MySQLi Object-Oriented)

<?php
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";

// Create connection
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}
echo "Connected successfully";
?>

Example (MySQLi Procedural)

<?php
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";

// Create connection
$conn = mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password);

// Check connection
if (!$conn) {
die("Connection failed: " . mysqli_connect_error());
}
echo "Connected successfully";
?>

Example (PDO)

<?php
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";

try {
$conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$servername;dbname=myDB", $username, $password);
// set the PDO error mode to exception
$conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
echo "Connected successfully";
}
catch(PDOException $e)
{
echo "Connection failed: " . $e->getMessage();
}
?>

Where Can I Find Free Web Hosting for Java+MySQL Websites?

posted on April 30, 2021

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We analyzed hundreds of free/paid hosting plans to find the best web hosting for Java+MySQL websites. But, free web hosting has limitations too.

If you are really serious about your website, always go with the best cheap hosting service. Many web hosting providers furnish the best cheap hosting service with amazing features.

The following are a few best cheap web hosting companies for Java+MySQL websites:·

    DomainRacer - Free SSL, SSD Hosting Affordable Platform
    SiteGround - Reliable, Domain name, and web hosting service
    BigRock - India's Leading domain registration and hosting company

You have to pick the most reliable and powerful web hosting provider from which you can get the best hosting package with top features and support multiple programming languages.

If you want to host your Java+MySQL website effectively, then you have to focus on a few perspectives:

  •     99.99% uptime, Free Let's Encrypt SSL Certificate for a secure connection
  •     Unlimited SSD Storage and unmetered bandwidth to store data with security
  •     21x faster LiteSpeed technology to decrease load time at high traffic.
  •     Support multiple languages, database, and the latest PHP version
  •     Best security tools like ImunifyAV+, DDo’S Protection, and more
  •     Weekly website backup and website migration service at free of cost.
  •     24/7 customer support via Phone, Email, Chat, Ticket, etc

These are the main highlighted tips that increase the performance of your website on the internet.

As per your needs and essential features you can select good for you.