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Disadvatanges of database based website

Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2005 10:25 am
by ljCharlie
I have created a website mostly dependent on MySQL database. What are the disadvantages? Will MySQL be able to serve about 100 to 500 users concurrently? I guess that is my main concern. Will a website based on database be slower or faster than a more traditional webesite where it is maily based on individual files?

Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2005 1:14 pm
by timvw
if the contents of the database don't change often... you could create a "cache file" of your pages and serve that...
(offcourse you can also throw in another db or web server.. it all depends on your needs.. )

Re: Disadvatanges of database based website

Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2005 1:43 pm
by RobertGonzalez
ljCharlie wrote:I have created a website mostly dependent on MySQL database. What are the disadvantages? Will MySQL be able to serve about 100 to 500 users concurrently? I guess that is my main concern. Will a website based on database be slower or faster than a more traditional webesite where it is maily based on individual files?
The software (MySQL) is capable of serving up quite a bit of data quickly when the database/tables are optimized and indexed properly. A lot of the answers to your question depend on the hardware setup you are using. A crappy computer with great server software installed on it is going to give you poor performance. If you have your database server software set up on an adequate machine then 100 to 500 concurrent users shouldn't break it. It might slow the site down a little, but that is more because your apps have to open a connection, hit the database, fetch the data, arrange it for display, parse/evaluate/interpret the output and then display it. That is always going to be a little slower than a browser interpreting a static HTML file.

However, if your app is kickin', I am sure your users can live with a slight reduction in overall performance and speed in exchange for a sweet application.

Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2005 2:51 pm
by ljCharlie
Thank you for all your responses. The reason I was thinking of going database is because I can allow users or whoever is responsible for a section of the website the ability to change the content or create new pages using a default template without knowing any web programming language. I'll just create an interface where the user will just change the texts and that is it. But my concern is that what if there is a lot of people downloading the same information from the database server. Will this cause a slow response from the database or perhaps crash the DB server. I'm not in charge of our web server so I'm not sure of the hardware specs but I'm positive that is quite decent since it serves the whole university.