DataWebTect

We are planning for an online application and were knocked down by the decision of which database to use as both have their own set of advantages and disadvantages.

MySQL:

* Open source and unlimited licensing
* Most hosting companies support it without any additional cost
* Administration is trivial and most hosting companies do it.
* Integrates tightly with PHP as that is what we have decided for the front end
* Challenging if not impossible to write stored procedures/functions for the business logic layer in the application. This is a gray area as we are not all that familiar with MySQL.
* Learning curve as we are new to learning MySQL although we have rich experience in Oracle.
* No limitation on storage support.

Oracle XE:

* Free for a single license.
* Not many hosting companies support it and if they do they might charge extra.
*  Administration is involved and many hosting companies shy away from Oracle for its complications.
* The XE has some support to the  PHP
* We have around 15 years of combined experience which makes writing the procedures/functions for business logic trivial task.
* No learning curve.
* Limited storage support 1GB.

Given the above we are exploring the information for making our decision. Called our hosting company and they said that they do not support ORACLE because they run on Linux. Although there is an Oracle for Linux, the hosting company just shied away. There are others that we can pursue but the single most important decision for us is the hosting cost. We are just starting up and we do not have much leverage on the spending. We are still in the initial stage and the cost is limited when we move either way but if we go down far enough then the cost could be exorbitant because of the changes we need to make going back and the time that it delays the project. We need help and will be thankful if the experts out there throw some light for making our decision.

We are planning for an online application and were knocked down by the decision of which database to use as both have their own set of advantages and disadvantages.

MySQL:

* Open source and unlimited licensing
* Most hosting companies support it without any additional cost
* Administration is trivial and most hosting companies do it.
* Integrates tightly with PHP as that is what we have decided for the front end
* Challenging if not impossible to write stored procedures/functions for the business logic layer in the application. This is a gray area as we are not all that familiar with MySQL.
* Learning curve as we are new to learning MySQL although we have rich experience in Oracle.
* No limitation on storage support.

Oracle XE:

* Free for a single license.
* Not many hosting companies support it and if they do they might charge extra.
*  Administration is involved and many hosting companies shy away from Oracle for its complications.
* The XE has some support to the  PHP
* We have around 15 years of combined experience which makes writing the procedures/functions for business logic trivial task.
* No learning curve.
* Limited storage support 1GB.

Given the above we are exploring the information for making our decision. Called our hosting company and they said that they do not support ORACLE because they run on Linux. Although there is an Oracle for Linux, the hosting company just shied away. There are others that we can pursue but the single most important decision for us is the hosting cost. We are just starting up and we do not have much leverage on the spending. We are still in the initial stage and the cost is limited when we move either way but if we go down far enough then the cost could be exorbitant because of the changes we need to make going back and the time that it delays the project. We need help and will be thankful if the experts out there throw some light for making our decision.