Need some general advice. We wish to build a DB with a web front end for our office project management. Our inital choice was MySQL and PHP on a linux box being accessed via a web server. The DB will have to be able to read/import information from tables in a MSAccess (Jet) DB as that is a legacy app that we cannot change. That app will be converting to MSDE in the next year or two, so we will have to be able to read/import data in that form later.

Once the data is in a database we need to be able to graph it.

What we are doing now is to link Excel to MSaccess for the graphs. It works. The graphs are very flexible and we get what we want. But I'd like to move to a web based non-Microsoft solution.

Question: Is MySQL/PHP the way to go? We have looked at a Firebird/Interbase solution as well.

This is one of those statistical kinds of problems. For any group of N competent people, there will be at least N * Log(N) valid opinions. For any group of N people drawn from the population as a whole, there will be approximately N! total opinions.

My opinion (for what it is worth) is that the Microsoft solutions will cost the least over time, unless your support and development time is free. MySQL and PHP offers a good non-Microsoft solution, at roughly 300-500% of the cost (but with no licensing fees). If you have the expertise available, PostgreSQL and Perl offer what I see as a better architectural solution with a higher cost of entry but lower ongoing cost. I can't offer any comment on Firebird/Interbase because I've never used them.

-PatP