Thread: Open up a dialog on MYSQL

From what I have seen of MYSQl I was wondering why such foreign systems for a pretty generic architecture? Tables, essentially arrays, query's intead of methods or functions. There are more, but outside of the foreign jargon, is such a database necessary? It would seem a lot easier to just develop a database (not that hard of a project), and use a common HTTP interface for data transfer. I understand not everyone uses it, but the fact that so many do seems odd to me. I understand people don't always want to go back and re-invent the wheel. Still it would save more time making HTTP interfaces more powerful, rather than wasting our time with all these drivers and plugins for databases.

Just jump in give me your two cents, it would be good for me to hear your opinions. Perhaps even play devils advocate, assuming I'm not by myself with these thoughts.

Post Script: there are other places this might fight (like JDBC/databases thread), however, I don't nessasarly have a question I want to talk more on a large scale (theoretical), so I feel it works here best.

You make a valid point - and what I can say is the old saying when it comes to
I.T and software development. Most programmers are lazy. Now do not take that the wrong way.
All programmers are brilliant - but (as you said) there is no need to re-do what is already there written
for us.

The saying "if it isn't broke don't fix it" never sounded more plausible here. MySQL has been around for a fair
few years - and being one of the most popular tools in LAMP development - I really cannot see it going away
anytime soon. Look at the video games industry.

Assembly was the #1 for all games on consoles at one point. It took decades for game developers to switch to
a higher level language which was C. Then it took even longer for them to make the transition to C++ (which seems
the norm in our day and age). It would take a bigger slice for all development teams of all AAA games to switch to
a managed language (C# and/or Java) because there are so many developers well versed in C++ and Lua - plus
most of the 'older' code written in C more or less works on a C++ compiler with minimal effort.

I do understand your reasoning - and believe me there are others like it around - me included - it would take a major
push for any syntactical change to happen - but you never know

Wishes Ada xx

tables, essentially arrays

Sorry, but to be brutally honest this statement alone suggests a fundamental lack of understanding of a what a database truly does. Normalization, primary and foreign keys, indexing, transactions, column/row locking, query optimization, inner/outer joins, referential integrity, manage data spread across multiple-servers, security, and a whole lot more. A database is a lot more than a 'bunch of arrays'.

It would seem a lot easier to just develop a database (not that hard of a project), and use a common HTTP interface for data transfer

I recommend then, to give it a try. There are API's that do this with several different underlying databases, but one must take into consideration not only in transferring secure data but also protecting from insecure transactions