Choose the right database for your website (SQL)

For a high performance website, use a client/server relational database management system (RDBMS) such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, or open source alternatives like MySQL (http://www.mysql.com) or PostgreSQL (http://www.postgresql.org). These programs manage interactions with the database so your website can still work properly even if many people are accessing it at once.

There are two main reasons that some web developers may not use such database programs:

• Learning how to use them properly can be time-consuming.
• Web hosting companies typically require an extra fee for your site to access special software.

Hence, some web developers use delimited text files and other flat file solutions, or file-based database programs designed mainly for desktop (workstation) use, such as Microsoft Access files (also called .mdb files).

But before you decide to go with such solutions, keep in mind that web hosting companies may include access to open source databases without any extra cost, whereas using .mdb files may require you to pay extra for Microsoft-based hosting. Furthermore, .mdb files aren’t good for storing really large databases, and they sometimes get corrupted, requiring you to fix them using Access. In any event, none of these solutions can handle as much traffic as a true enterprise RDBMS.