MongoDB vs MySQL – My Personal Thoughts

In the past year or so, I’ve been really trying to open my mind to other languages and technologies available. Today, I started taking a course on MongoDB.  Initially, I thought, what a great concept… I get all the scalability and it’s all JSON based.  The more I courses I took, I thought of a lot of different ways to use MongoDB.

I thought to myself, ok what are the downsides, so I started doing some Google searches and sure enough I found some really interesting debates on MongoDB vs Mysql.  Overall, what I found and agree with is depending on the scope of your project and what it’s needs are will decide what option you would choose.  Although, in my personal opinion MySQL is good for both small and very large projects.

A big downside for me between the 2 is the fact that MongoDB does not support transactions.  It’s said that MongoDB is MUCH, MUCH faster then MySQL, however they meet those impressive benchmarks with a possibility of something going wrong.  I don’t know about you, but I like the idea of a nice stable transactional system like MySQL.

It could simply be that I am not experienced enough with MongoDB yet,  I’m simply reporting what the majority of the research showed me.

I’ll continue to learn MongoDB, it’s always good to expand knowledge into other areas.

How to Debug MySQLi Bind Parameters

Using MySQLi and bind parameters were a little bit of a change for me as I’m sure it was for others as well.  Once you understand how it works, it’s not really too bad.

One thing I’ve found while doing some research, I’ve noticed a lot of others wondering how to output the “old style” SQL statement when using bind parameters.  See the 2 functions below to do just that

<?php

$sql = "SELECT * FROM contacts WHERE email_address IN (?,?) AND group = ? ";
$email1 = 'luketesting@gmail.com';
$email2 = 'luketesting2@gmail.com';
$group = 2;
$bind_params = array('ssi', &$email1, &$email2, &$group);

print display_bind_params_sql($sql, $bind_params);

/**
* Returns an "old style" sql statment from an incoming bind params / prepared sql statment
*
* @param string $query The prepared sql statement with the ? in place
* @param array $bind_params The bind params array
*/
function display_bind_params_sql($query, $bind_params)
{
    // Get the data types...
    $data_types = $bind_params[0];
    array_shift($bind_params);

    foreach($bind_params as $key => $param)
    {    
        switch($data_types[$key])
        {
            case 'i':
                $query = str_replaceFirst('?', $param, $query);
                break;

            default:
                $query = str_replaceFirst('?', "'" . $param . "'", $query);
                break;
        }
    }
    return $query;
}

/**
* Replace the first occurance in a string
*
* @param string The string to replace
* @param string The string to replace with
* @param string The string we are checking
*/
function str_replaceFirst($s,$r,$str)
{
    $l = strlen($str);
    $a = strpos($str,$s);
    $b = $a + strlen($s);
    $temp = substr($str,0,$a) . $r . substr($str,$b,($l-$b));
    return $temp;
}

?>

I hope this helps someone looking for a little more “familiar” debugging information.