First lecture at UNI and SQL
Posted by Michael Dale on Mon, 28 Feb 2005 3:09 PMYes it's not even the first day yet (I need to head back in tonight), but I have some time off to write about it.
My first lecture (2 hours) was Database Fundamentals. No work done yet, just a basic introduction into the course. This looks to be quite a useful subject. We'll be learning database structure, development and queries.
The database software that we will be developing on is PostgreSQL, which is interesting. MySQL and PostgreSQL are the two most popular open source database systems. PostgreSQL is known for its stability while MySQL is known for speed.
It will be very interesting learning PostgreSQL as I've mainly used MySQL for all my development stuff. There has always been a large debate over which is better. Hopefully I'll be able to write something comparing them. I would also be interested to see how easy it is to add support for PostgreSQL into my blog script. I currently run a basic MySQL class that sits between the queries and the database, we'll have to see if the queries are compatible with each other.
Anyway, the lecture was a good introduction into what I should expect from the course. The reason I have time to write this entry is that there are no tutorials on this week. So that lecture finished at 11am and my next one is at 8pm! This won't be the case from next week onwards, I'll be in at UNI all day.
So yeah the course looks good, we're even allowed to do some web based development for one of the assignments. Cool, should be good.
PostgreSQL is known for its stability while MySQL is known for speed.
You can say that again! Not happy jan. :(
My mySQL database database just crashed. :/ I'm considering using PostgreSQL for my blog.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic.php?id=549
Also do you guys remember what, I said in my last post? I can remember most of the content but not all of it. I'll have my web server box running.
mmm that doesn't sound right. I've had my server go offline because of power problems and I haven't lost any data.
You really shouldn't be having a problem this early into using MySQL. Are you sure it isn't a hardware problem?
No not a hardware problem. Definitly a software problem. I just went to my website and started getting mySQL error messages from my homepage lastnight.
I have no problems with mySQL. Definetely something odd on your end.
Also, I think PostgreSQL has been "more developed," in terms of features, than MySQL. That's not to say that MySQL is not catching up...
Things like triggers, which I think MySQL has now. And there was something else, I forgot what it was.
As far as documentation, and support, you can't beat MySQL on that.
Still, it would be interesting to learn SYNTAX differences - if there are any.