[KLUG Members] MySQL adoption

[bill]

> Apache/PHP came online as an easy and rather nifty way
> to solve a coiple of problems.  

This is important and not enough emphasized by the pro-postgres people. 
  It's like they don't want to admit it.  PHP/MySQL is Easy, fast, 
cheap.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

> And the intranet grew like a malignant
> cancer.

This was -because- Apache/PHP/Mysql are such a good combination (and 
hey, if we assume Linux it is a LAMP system).  Rapid growth is not ipso 
facto a bad thing, the cancer metaphor is pejorative.

> Right;  hence the emphasis on getting the message out to start that
> way.  Because hundreds of more-or-less stand alone PHP files is a mess. 
> PHP and other scripting lanaguage are really handy,  but their also a
> trap.

That's your interpretation of your situation.  Not necessarily 
duplicable everywhere else and not necessarily the proper interpretation 
of your situation.  Hey, whose the Netadmin over there, doesn't he have 
any responsibility in this? ;-)

In my view the chief thing being overlooked by the 
always-start-with-postgres crowd is while they see that the ease of 
deployment of PHP/MySQL can create problems later they don't see that 
the difficulty of PostGres with all it's programming overhead can create 
problems now.

In other words, it is quite possible for a newbie to be so intimidated 
by fearful talk of layer abstraction, triggers, transactions and views 
that they never start: they never offer to do it at work, they never 
create their own dynamic website, they never contribute their 
intellectual capital to the growth of the internet and networks at large.

To use another metaphor, it's like building inspectors preaching 
hellfire to the pioneers.  Maybe the inspectors know a lot about 
buildings, but they're overlooking the need to build a country.  Hey, we 
needed those people to move west and develop.  It was better for them to 
build a lesser building and succeed (and build better later) than for 
them to have never left home to build at all.

There is something valuable about contributing your effort to a larger 
whole, leaving something behind you after you've moved on.  Those who do 
not build leave nothing behind.  The principal ties in rather with the 
whole open source movement, I believe.  The more people contributing 
generally by trying new things specifically the better.

kind regards,

bill hollett