Oracle XE or MySQL , which one I should choice?

Question

I am going to develop a SNS website. Now I need to make a decision between Oracle XE and MySQL.

I know you are a group of experts. Can you share some comments on this?

Best wishes

Ariso

Answer 1

The things I'd consider:

1) Are you ever likely to want to scale it up massively? If so Oracle will allow a very straight forward route to a massively scalable platform (you can pretty much just back up the database and restore it to a full Oracle instance).

2) Are you going to want to scale moderately? If so then Oracle XE is limited to 4Gb total DB size where MySQL can perform reasonably with significantly more.

3) Would the other constraints on Oracle XE likely impact you? It will only support 1Gb of RAM and 1 CPU for instance. If you think you're likely to need more than this for decent performance it's a non-starter. See the FAQ (http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/xe/pdf/dbxe_faq.pdf) for more details.

4) Do you have skills in either in your organisation? Not only as a developer but also for support, back up strategy and so on. If there are skills in place then likely go with whichever you have the skills for. Make sure you speak to the support guys too and get their input.

My gut feel says MySQL but use the above to weigh it up.

Answer 2

I would choose MySQL. Oracle XE is just supposed to be used for a proof of concept kind of thing. It is like the crack dealer giving you a taste then charging you a butt load once your hooked :D

I think MySQL is a solid choice for small to midsized applications. But your anticipated size will negate your decision.