Re: Newbie and Debian.

From: Andy Fraser (andyfraser31_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 09/17/04 

Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 23:08:10 +0100

In alt.os.linux, Eris uttered these immortal words:

> O.K. I am an old fart. I am just getting into networking, web. Want to
> set up something my kids can access from there homes in Michigan and
> Virginia.

Ok. To do what though?
 
> I have worked on Microsoft SQL Server for years, would like to learn
> the Linux equivalent and kiss Microsoft good bye.

There is no "the Linux equivalent", not directly anyway. Depending on what
you want to achieve you could use MySQL or PostgreSQL as I said earlier. It
depends what features you want though. For example, dynamic Linux-based web
servers tend to use MySQL because it's small, fast and easy to admin,
especially for newbies to RDBMSs, but lacks some of the advanced features
of PostgreSQL and SQL Server.

It sounds like you know what you're doing so maybe PostgreSQL would suit you
better. Maybe you don't want advanced features and want an easy life in
which case MySQL may be better. Check them both out and see which one fits
your purpose. Linux is about choices after all. :-)

> Python is it a decent way to access mySQL or PostgreSQL?

I guess. I've never programmed in Pythin though. I use PHP, Perl, C and C++
to access MySQL programmaticaly. I don't need the features of PostgreSQL so
I don't run it very often.

> I guess that an Access or C# interface would be nice.

There's no equivalent to Access yet. Developers are working on it but I
haven't seen anything that comes close yet. There's a MySQL ODBC driver for
Access if that helps. You can access the MySQL server on a Linux box over a
network with it.

> Do I have a GUI
> to work with in Linux? Forms?

phpMyAdmin is the best I've used for MySQL. It requires a web server that
works with PHP and PHP installed to work. There's phpPgAdmin for
PostgreSQL. If you want to create applications a la Access you'll have to
code it yourself if you can't find a ready-built one that suits you. For
the time being at least.
 
> Thanks for all your help, I appreciate it.

I think I'm starting to repeat myself now. It's hard to offer anything
constructive without knowing exactly what you're going to do. Unfortunately
the one area where Linux is lacking is in GUI database stuff. Apart from
that I'm not sure what you're asking so I've posted some general info that
may point you in the right direction. :-) 

-- 
Andy.

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