SQL Database

I currently have a fairly basic website running on Debian. I have been using this to learn PHP, and have now decided to extend that to include SQL. So what I wish to know is what SQL database should I use?

Any questions you need answered to help make a determination will be answered but I make no promises as to being prompt as my time available to access this site is a bit hit and miss at the moment.

All responses will be gratefully received.

MySQL works well with Apache and PHP, and is fairly easy to set up. Hence "LAMP" (Linux, Apache, MySQL, [PHP | Perl | Python]).

Mysql is pretty much the standard one used by linux users.

There are others though like postgre, sqlite.

If you are mad you can also get php to work with MS Access databases using odbc

LAMP for the win!

I found MySQL pretty straightforward to learn, the syntax is very user friendly.

postgres is better than mysql but tbh, it doesn't matter, i've always used mysql for my websites with no issues and it's the defacto standard dbms offered by *nix-based web hosts

As an adition I use the PHPMyAdmin software to manage MySQL - makes life easier.

I like postgres, but it is a little non-standard, and I'm not convinced that it's getting so much development as MySQL. The only doubt in my mind is as to whether Oracle will kill, or stop development of, MySQL or whether they will enhance it with their existitng technology.

Access can provide a good front end to MySQL while you're doing your development work - particularly on queries.

It can, but I've had problems in the past if there hasn't been a timestamp field in each of the MySQL tables, throws up hordes of write conflict errors, especially if you are dealing with sub forms.

Not to mention that the ODBC connector gets disconnected every few minutes unless you have a keep alive connection string in the DSN, took me a while to figure that one out!

I found huge issues if trying to use a table stored as utf-8 basically it didnt do anything. I found latin-1 to work adequately though.

I did make an access program with a large number of subforms and in the end it did work fine. Granted you cant expect apps like this to run with a large user base.