Hi guys,

We’re students from the TU Delft working on a project where we have to choose from certain database or other ways to store information about publications. Now we have to decide based on several criteria, one of which is speed to access the data over the internet. The options we’re considering are:

C
C++
Delphi
Java
MySQL
MS SQL
MS Access
Oracle
PHP

Please don’t spend your time on telling us which one to choose, just this: could someone grade all of these systems on their speed, 10 being the fastest one, 0 for the slowest. Thank you!

MS Access has ZERO speed over the internet, as it cannot be used over the internet. Period.

C/C++/Delphi/VB really have no difference in speed over the internet. Their speed differences will be in development time.

Huh? Access can be used as a back-end for databases over the internet, if the host supports it.

Also, by including Programming Languages in your list with Database servers, you may not be comparing Apples and Oranges, but you are definitely trying to compare Fruit and Branches.

so how come i'm doing it my site as we speak?

your statement, made so boldly and unequivocably, is therefore flat out wrong

if you had said "it is not advised to use access as the backend database for a web site that expects substantial volume" then we'd be in agreement

I think he meant that access alone, without any HTML/*SP/PHP front end does not work over the internet. SQL Server has a similar problem, since folks started shutting down port 1434 UDP on all their routers. How advisable it is to expose an Access database or a SQL Server to the internet sans firewall may be up for another debate, not included in this question.

Ms Access databases can be used no problem over the Internet, what he means is that when you have more than a dozen hits per second Access's access speeds quickly decrease.

I don't recommend Access as a website backend if the owner wants more than 10 simultaneous users. It's just plain wrong.

I had this discussion already with someone else in an Oracle topic, but we have to make a list of possible solutions, and in the end we will choose a combination of them (very likely based on our criteria it will be Java/MySQL). But what we will be comparing it with is two pipes, connected in series. If the one pipe is incredibly thin (for example MS Access), you can have the biggest pipe in front of it, it won't help you. So we are not comparing them as much as it may seem here, we just want to know where a bottleneck might be.

Wow, people do that? All that Web Server / 3 tier (or N Tier) technology was laboriously designed to prevent just such direct access. Amazing.

To the OP: Can you elaborate on what you mean by including programming languages in such a quesiton? It's about like saying "can you make it across the country faster using a car, a truck, or an automobile manufacturer?"

By "Access", can we presume you mean the Jet Database Engine? Does Access support http now?

Anyway; for storing a publication, I guess you mean white papers, news articals, etc. What sort of format and content ie: photos, multi-media, anything else that would have a big impact on size or storability?

well some programming languages can be optimized further than others. for example using an assembly language you can optimize it way farther than a java compiler. it's more like using a car, a truck, or a yet to design car made by ferrari or skoda. (for the americans here: a nascar team or GM)

this question is too complicated for me, sorry, i mean using ms access to store and maintain the database, if that helps you.

no i just mean the very title, amount of pages, author etc., not the actual publication, sorry about that.

By "Access", can we presume you mean the Jet Database Engine? Does Access support http now?

No, Access does not support HTTP (whatever that means when speaking about a db), it's about the Jet Engine/ODBC bridge ( depending on programming language ), but that's not the point, exposing Access to the Internet, actually means making the file available via HTTP on your web server, so anybody can download it ( not safe ), but nobody would be able to connect to it directly of your website ( why would they if they can download it).

So if you do use Access (please don't), place your file outside of the document root, or protect the folder from outside access.

It can't be access directly over the internet. It CAN be used as the back end on the server, with an active server page(s) as the middle tier, but, if you are using a client-side language (c/c++/Delphi/VB, etc.,) it cannot be accessed directly. (IF you set up a VPN, you could probably connect to it, but it would be unuseable for multiple users.)

thanks for the clarification, lou

i'm sure you will agree that "can't be access[ed] directly over the internet" isn't quite the same as your first comment, "cannot be used over the internet. Period."

access can also be used with coldfusion and php in the middle tier

True.

I was looking at it on a client-server basis. (the client programming languages got me started down that path!)

Looking at the OP's initial objective - choosing a platform and environment, let's get back to basics.

First: The database is very small, as databases go. Indexes for even 1,000,000 publications, maybe 6 tables, 200,000 authors, 5,000 publishers, etc. is a relatively small database. It's likely to all fit in memory on just about any decent server.

Also; the OP was bent on performance. I think that's a fairly lesser concern for such a simple database. Sure, Access's built in Jet Engine database may have some trouble with bigger searches, but properly indexed, even it would handle it just fine.

I'd cross Access Jet off the list for low reliability, recoverability, interopability, and other such concerns.

Also; forget about using DLL based languages like VB and C++ except perhaps for a COM object or some common component. Scripting languages are very fast when kept simple - and this one looks simple.

The ODBC used by C++, VB, and VBScript are all the same ODBC.

So; unless this is a live streaming video or some other highly demanding application, then a normal Web implementation, with a decent DB back-end (like Oracle, SQL Server, or My SQL) should be just fine. In fact; any implementation could probably be equally efficient or inefficient.

In other words; concern yourself with things like security, backup and monitoring capability, redundancy, cost, programmer effort, etc. That's where you'll see the real strengths and weaknesses.

If performance becomes an issue, don't blame the software platform if you chose a fairly mainstream non-cheesy solution (IIS, Apache, VBScript, JavaScript, Oracle, SQL Server, etc). Again; if you were streaming video, it would be a different story.

Did I mention cost? Microsoft wants a license for every logged in user last I checked. If it's for academic purposes then it may escape that. MySQL is the obvious choice for cost. Then there's the programming cost. You can get a good web programmer, unfortunately, for about $35/hr. Not so for a C++ guy who won't make an amature mess out of everything - not to mention that it would take 10 times as long to do a job in C++ then just about any of the rapid-development solutions (VBScript, etc).

Each solution has it's place and C++ is not this one's. You could write the DB access COM object in C++, but the actual application should be in a widely supported web server solution (Cold Fusion, ASP, etc).

Those are good points vich.

I would also add PostgreSQL to the potential database server choices. It's quite capable, very stable, (and, unlike MySQL, there is never a license cost for PostgreSQL.)