Hi everybody,
Can anyone tell me what is the difference between downloading MySQL
directly from their web site, as oppose to getting it from XAMMP, which
may provide a latter MySQL version? One of my goals is to is to learn a
database.
The MySQL web site will always have the newest version -- at least in
source code form. It might not have it in a compiled form you can use
on your system. XAMPP is packaged for convenience; it has MySQL,
Apache, PHP, and other software already compiled for you. The
drawbacks (that I know of) are that the versions of the software they
include are not necessarily the newest available (that is true at
least in the case of their MySQL), and -- importantly -- XAMPP
configures everything so that all features are enabled and there
really isn't any security in place, e.g. anyone can connect to the
computer running XAMPP and access its databases. It's possible to put
the normal security things in place, but they don't do it for you
(their emphasis is on just getting things usable for developers as
quickly as possible).
I don't know how hard it would be to get Ruby and a web framework
enabled in XAMPP, either.
