I’ve been meaning to set up a personal blog for some time, but I never found quite the right package for my tastes. I wanted something I could tinker with and extend. There were several PHP packages that would have fit the bill, but as a huge fan of Macromedia ColdFusion, I thought I’d look there first.
As it turned out, most of the Macromedia-inspired blogs I read happen to use the same package, Ray Camden’s BlogCFC. This package looked like just what I wanted, but with one exception — the database support was somewhat limited. Only Access, SQL Server, and MySQL were supported out-of-the-box. While I have no qualms with SQL Server, all of my servers run Linux of one version or another so that wasn’t an option. This also disqualified Access, but honestly it hadn’t even gotten into the game.
So now to MySQL. Anyone that knows me has heard my cries of “Use a real database!” every time someone suggests MySQL for a new project. As someone raised on enterprise-level RDBMSs, MySQL always felt amateurish and limited.
I really like PostgreSQL, so I set about hacking BlogCFC to support it. This turned out to be messier than I had hoped; I got bogged down in the details, and never got around to starting a blog.
When I saw that a new version of BlogCFC was available, I figured I needed to check it out again.
I liked what I saw, so I finally put my reservations aside and installed it with a MySQL backend — in the interest of actually getting something going now.
So, here I am. I’m going to try to get my feet wet with short tips at first to try to build some momentum. I’m still not crazy about committing the RAM and processor cycles to a second database backend on my server, but at least now I can work on that PostgreSQL port gradually while getting some practical experience with the package.
MySQL 5 has actually started to add on all the features of a "real" database engine, like triggers and stored procedures. I think the project leader’s quote was, "We’re going to take care of a decade’s worth of complaints in one release."
I’d like to ditto Squiggy. I really think you should take a second look at MySQL.
Also – thanks for giving the blog another try. If you have any problems, let me know.
As far as MySQL goes, it’s more of a twelfth look.
I guess I have more complaints with inadequate database designs perpetrated by the users of MySQL than I do the product. I have friends that are <b>very</b> good DBAs and use MySQL, but most of the MySQL users I’ve come across as a consultant use it because they don’t know what they’re missing, either from a technology standpoint or technique standpoint.
If they added Sequences to MySQL, I might consider using it more, though. Once you get used to having them, it’s hard to want to design with AUTONUMBER or Identity fields to generate your primary key values.