Choosing a database for a University website

Hello,

This is my first post, I'm a web designer working for a UK university. We are currently looking at creating a new database driven website to replace our existing static one. The website is the institutions main website and is used primarily to attract prospective students, though other audiences includes business, research etc. We already have an existing intranet so this is primarily a marketing focussed site.

The website will allow visitors to register and allow us to store their details so we can send them e-cards, setup forums etc. We have many DB systems throughout the university of various ilks, ie ingress, access etc and we would like the option in the future of being able to utilise data from them too. The website will recieve thousands of hits per week (sometimes daily) and it must be very solid.

The website will also have all our course information (approximately 400 pages) and we would like to use the information for both the web and to output to our printed prospectuses. Eventually we would like academics/staff to update their own course information using a CMS.

I am currently investigating differenent db solutions and specifically I am looking for comparisons, pro's and cons etc between different db soloutions ie php and mysql, coldfusion, asp etc. (I did do a search on db comparisons but little came up).

We will be getting a respected programmer into do the development side of things, with myself creating the design and possibly one other to help with producing multimedia elements.

I have to produce a report of my findings this friday(typical education sector, nothing happens for months then you are given a rushed deadline!)

I would be interested in hearing opinions on which DB to use and why with pros and cons(security, ease of use, flexability, costs, implementation etc) of different systems, etc.

I would also be interested in hearing from anyone in the educational sector with their thoughts and suggestions on such a system that they already have in place or are implementing.

Your thoughts and suggestions would be welcome.

Go with MySQL for several reasons.

1. It's Free
2. Proven Reliability + Scalability
3. Great Support
4. Now with more features then ever

hey let's face it if NASA switched from Oracle to MySQL , your university will be just fine.

Here is another interesting article about Who uses MySQL DB

my 2 cents,
Lito

If you're looking for Scalability and Nice Performance tuning feature.... Oracle is the answer.... off course, it's astronomically figure.

As this project is your first one I would go with MySQL for a number of reasons:
- Easy to use (easier than most of other "real" databases)
- Fast
- Free (but you can get paid support if you need it)
- Cross platform (*nix, windows)
- Good administrative tools available (phpMyAdmin, MySQL CC ...)
- Many interfaces available (php, odbc, jdbc, .net)

A more advanced user would prefer PostgreSQL, but I doubt that a beginner would appreciate the advanced features it offers.
Of course Oracle is the best one, but again I don't think you would appreciate it's features.

Why not take a look onto tdbengine?

It's a very small, but really powerful rdbms which works without one single line in SQL. The administration is really easy which propably makes it interesting for you as a "beginner".
It is all in one: database, compiler and interpreter and runs under windows as well as under linux. It's freeware for any purpose, privat use and commercial use as well.
Try the English pages at http://www.tdbengine.org

If you need/want SQL to query your database then it's not the right thing for you at all, because the tdbengine based sql-server is still in heavy development.

But what about a time if the University ever decides to switch or upgrade their database that does use SQL... wouldn't all the pages that use the database then have to be modified? Oh what a nightmare that would be.