On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 9:21 AM, tedd <tedd.sperling@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > At 1:15 AM -0600 5/5/08, Jorge wrote: > > > First I would like to say that I have had PHP experience but not enough to > say I am a PHP developer. > > > > I want to use PHP to build a site that uses MySQL, I am building it from > scratch so I don't know where to start, should I start with PHP and design a > database around my code, or should I designs the db and design the site are > the db. > > > > is it just a matter of preference or is there a recommended way to do > this? > > > > > Contrary to all popular belief and religion -- start with an html page that > gathers the information you need/want. > > After you decide what you want to gather, then design a flat database to > store that information. A database is nothing more than a place to store and > retrieve stuff. > > Don't worry about the higher orders of database design just yet, get it to > work and understand what you are doing. > > If you want to better your design, then pick up a couple books on MySQL and > learn what people are arguing about. However, realize that you can get > something working quite well without being a database expert. > > It's easy to get it to work -- but, to get it to work well, takes a bit > more effort. > > Cheers, > > tedd I will respectfully (though strongly) disagree here, tedd. If you are building a guest book and all you need is a place to "store and retrieve stuff," store it in a file rather than a database. If you only have one form to collect and store information, this will be more than sufficient. If you are doing something more complex where you need to relate information (say, for example, forum members <-> forum topics <-> forum messages, or customers <-> orders <-> items, etc.) then you are far better off to think about what you need to store and plan your database first. Doing that will make your data model much better from the start, and you can also start planning out what your HTML pages need to be collecting as it relates to how the data is stored. Andrew -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
