.NET and MySQL working together and is it scalable

Question

Hi All. I'm working on an application that will use .NET as the application platform. Originally, we were going to use SQL Server as the database, but after some research, MySQL came up as a popular database that is used by some high transaction based applications(i.e. Facebook, Craigslist, etc...). The app we're working on will involve a high amount of transactions and needs to be scalable at the same time. From what I read, MySQL does this extremely well. My question is, does it work well with .NET? Something that I also saw was that those apps also use PHP or Perl.

Does anyone have any experience with working with these two technologies together? Not by themselves, but .NET using a MySQL database. What did you think about the performance? Is it scalable? Any insight would be helpful. I'm just researching now and I would like to hear about everyone's experience with those two together.

Thanks everyone!

Answer 1

.Net and MySql will work together just fine. There are native .Net drivers for MySql that supplement the built in drivers for MsSql.

Whether MySql is a better choice than MsSql is a different question. You may want to consider other databases like PostgreSql as well if you are looking for alternatives.

edit: The driver for MySql is located here: http://www.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/

Answer 2

SQL Server should be your first choose, as there are so many examples on using SQL Server with .net etc. Having a “single point of blame” is also useful if you get problems.

However MySql is:

• Free
• You can get the source code

So if you are going to put the database on lots of server, then consider MySql, but in most cases SQL Server will do the job well.