Hi there.

We are a small company that makes frozen products that are sold in
supermarkets.  We recently hired sales reps in several cities in the
US and Canada to maintain our displays in stores and to take orders
from those stores.  Each rep visits 12 stores a day and take a digital
photo of our display at each store.  Then they go home, write up an
email to us about the situation at each store, attach the digital
photos to the emails, and send it to us.  Then they write emails to
the local distributors containing their orders for the day and send
them, cc?ing us.

The system is working well, except as we add more and more sales reps,
the flow of information into the Head Office is becoming a raging
torrent, and frankly we can?t keep up with it.  So, we came up with
the great idea to automate the entire process via a database-driven
web application.  The idea is that the sales reps should be able to
log into a site, enter a user name and password, then enter and upload
their report, photos and orders for the day, which would thereafter be
stored in a database that we could access from the Head Office.

There is a lot of data to input: Store Name, Street Address, City,
Zip, Store Contact etc. etc., plus all our various distributors and
individual products.  We figure that the system should be robust
enough to handle at least fifty sales reps covering a total of 3,750
stores.

We sent RFPs to several software companies and received several bids
back.  Okay, here comes the question part:  Roughly half the bidders
want to use Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP while the other half wants to use
Microsoft/IIS/MS SQLServer/.NET.  (We are currently running a
Microsoft server in the office, but if it was cheap enough, I suppose
we could add another server running LINUX.)

My question is:  Which solution is ?better?, and, from my (user?s)
point of view, do I even care?  (The software-building costs are about
the same for both types of system.)

I am looking for a robust system that will last our company for
several years, that can be added to as we think of more bells and
whistles, and that will need minimum maintenance.

Thank you in advance.

I'd recommend going the mySQL/Apache/PHP route. The main reason?
Portability. mySQL, Apache and PHP all will run on either Linux or
Windows. With a solution based in these technologies, you can change
your mind about OS without having to start over. The other route will
only work on Microsoft systems and limits your choices for the future.

Linux system administration is a different animal than on Windows, so
you'll have to learn some new ropes. Your users, however, are coming
through a web page and won't see any difference regardless of which
choice you make.

Personally, I prefer Linux in this case for a number of reasons, but
every reason I list can and will be violently countered by those who
prefer Windows, so I won't bother. I will, however, reiterate my
original reason to recommend the Linux route, which is that all the
elements other than the OS itself are portable.

- Hammer

Hello,

We are a software company. We are doing software on both platform
include online shops. Diference between platforms:

From the point of programmer is more cheap to programming in PHP or
Java because both are open source instand of that .NET & C# is very
expencive and many companies prefered not working with it.
MSSQL and MySQL = for sure MSSQL like performance not recomandet like
price, very expencive.
We had small problems on MySQL with more then 10,000 users conected
one time but we optimase the DB and now seams working well. This
problem never hapend on MSSQL.
Server Management for us is more easy to work with linux server and if
your hostion provider give you a Cpanel  or Plesk server manangement
tool it is very easy to administer that server. Before that need a
server admin to install a lot of things here can be a problem if you
not used before Linux. Windows is more easy to be administer by
beginer admin.
Like programmer I'm PHP fun because the application has a reduce cost
but if you have more then 20,000 users conected in the same time to
the data base I recomand .NET & MSSQL is more stable.

Good luck !

Virgil

Virgil says, "but if you have more then 20,000 users conected in the
same time to the data base I recomand .NET & MSSQL is more stable.
"

I'm going to have to disagree. With the proper configuration and
hardware, a Linux/UNIX server running Apache/PHP/MySQL will perform
just as well, if not better, than an application configured in .NET
with MSSQL database connectivity. In addition, you're going to save
enough money in licensing to purchase better server hardware.

Linux/UNIX can be difficult to quickly configure coming from Windows,
but with a little patience I think it would be your best solution,

James Kassemi