When installing Drupal 5, the "Database Configuration" screen some users see differs from what is presented in the Getting Started PDF guide and the handbook page. If I understand correctly, if a user is running more recent versions of MySQL and PHP, a "Database type" option is displayed with the choices mysql or mysqli. The help text gives no indication of the differences or trade offs between mysql and mysqli.

Are there any tradeoffs? Does choosing mysqli cause problems with any contributed modules?

Would someone have trouble if they chose mysqli for development and then needed to deploy to mysql? It wouldn't make for an ideal development environment, but someone might be developing on a local machine and deploying to a shared hosting environment.

I'm guessing if someone has PostgreSQL installed, that option will be listed as well. Some tradeoffs of MySQL vs. PostgreSQL are explained in the documentation though.

Comments

Barry Madore’s picture

Barry Madore commented
Component: Installation » Correction/Clarification

changing component

add1sun’s picture

add1sun commented

mysqli is PHP's "improved" MySQL extension for MySQL 4.1 and above, so basically if you have MySQL 4.1 + you would typically use mysqli. I don't think Drupal cares that much but you would need to make sure you switched the db info in settings.php if the new site you were moving to didn't have the same extension enabled. Drupal just needs to know which extension your version of PHP wants to use. In D6 this UI issue is taken care of for you, in that it won't ask you to choose between them, it will just use mysqli if it is available.

So, we can add a note about this to the D5 docs, but it isn't necessary in any later versions. If someone could write a little blurb about "what to do if you get two mysql options on the db screen" then we can add it.

leehunter’s picture

leehunter commented
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

Marking this as 'won't fix'. D5 is being phased out soon so work on the install guide is not productive.