New Christonomy Release

Well, it has been a long time, but I finally got a new Christonomy posting up. Not much new content, but a lot of changes in the backend. Making the move from Sql Server 2000 to MySql went pretty smoothly.

The only real hangup was finding good ways to connect to MySql from .NET code. I tried both the generic OleDb and ODBC classes in the .NET framework, but that was nothing but painful. I also tried a few other libraries provided by third parties and eventually settled on one of them provided by ByteFX. They have their own website and have been adopted by MySql and the mono project as their supported MySql library. MySql also has a page devoted to the library.

MySql, however, does not seem to be widely used in the .NET community. This is probably because most .NET developers are also Sql Server developers (which is the case for me as well). And even though the price of a Sql Server license itself is a little high, cheap hosting is available, often as cheap as MySql hosting. But, the super-nice fella who was giving us free hosting could not afford a Sql Server license at this time, so it was either use a free database (like MySql) or go elsewhere. Thus I made the move to MySql, and I'm happy about it. It is, by far, the highest quality and easiest to use open-source software package I've ever tried to use. Installation on my local pc was a snap (less intensive than a Sql Server install, though theirs isn't bad) and the development tools you can download from the MySql site are pretty nice (though not quite as nice as Sql Server's Enterprise Manager and Query Analyzer). Development was, of course, slower at first, having to go from stored procs to dynamic sql and having to deal with new data types, but once I got used to everything not really any slower than Sql Server development. Overall, I am very pleased with the experience, plan to use it again, and hope more .NET developers do the same. Not that I don't like Sql Server...I do quite a bit. But MySql has its advantages.

Eric Sowell