I'm not familiar with Paradox, so much of what I'm about to say may be academic.
What is your position at the school? If you are on the IT staff and have great
say in the decision-making process, I would suggest that you migrate to MySQL
*and* switch to a Linux/BSD system. The latter is more a matter of preference,
but I feel that using a more common DBMS (like MySQL or PostgreSQL) would be
beneficial to all involved. There's no need to teach staff and/or students the
inner workings of a system they'll probably never see again.
I use MySQL for nearly all of my projects. The free support available is
outstanding, just as it is with PHP. As you mentioned, PHP's built-in support
for MySQL makes the two a natural pair, so much so that I'm thrown for a curve
every time that I see a message on this list relating to another DBMS! I
couldn't be happier with the combination, and as MySQL evolves to support
transactions and other, more advanced features, my enjoyment grows further.
Returning to the issue at hand, one can argue for a switch to Linux/BSD for the
same reasons. Open-source platforms are becoming the most common out there, and
it is best to prepare your students/staff for what they will find "out there."
It has always been my policy to offer a Wintel option when preparing proposals,
but I've had very few clients over the years that actually took that option when
the costs were considered. However, the cost of migrating can be expensive as
well, so when dealing with an existing system, it's a tough call. I wish you
the best of luck with it.
Edward Dudlik
Becoming Digital
www.becomingdigital.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paolo Bonavoglia" <paolo_bonavoglia@virgilio.it>
To: <php-db@lists.php.net>
Sent: Saturday, 10 May, 2003 10:36
Subject: The DB is very slow.
My school has a site on a HP NetServer E200 with Win2000 Server
and Apache-Php. There are many web-pages accessing Paradox databases with
the odbc PhP functions.
Now the system is very slow in answering to DB queries; e.g. I
have a graphic counter which uses a Paradox tables to record info about
visitors; when the table bocomes too big (about 10-20000 rows) the counter
becomes very very slow; only cutting the table to the last hundreds of
visits, the counter behaves good.
Why is the system so slow for big tables? it is a Paradox matter,
a ODBC matter, a Win2000 matter? A hardware (CPU, RAM) matter?
Now I'm looking for the best solution; I have only some ideas:
1. Migrate the server to Linux (I'm trying Mandrake 9.1); but are
there Linux ODBC driver for Paradox? Is it true that Apache/Php behaves
better on Linux?
2. Migrate from Paradox to MySQL which is said to be very fast and can
be managed directly by PhP; but are there tools to easily convert Paradox
tables into MySQL? And is MySQL so much faster than Paradox/ODBC to justify
the [big] job?
3. Improve the hardware: more RAM, a new server (e.g. a Xeon dual
processor). Is it worth the money?
and as you see, I've many doubts too.
Is there somobody which can solve these doubts?
Paolo Bonavoglia
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