Yup, that's PHP for you. There's a good reason I don't like PHP.

It is possible to make a clean web app in PHP. Even in PHP4. But the language really invites sloppy programming, security flaws and so on. That's why I prefer JSP and ASP.NET. PHP5 is a step in the right direction, but it isn't there yet.

Same goes for MySQL. Version 5 is a step in the right direction, but it's still not ANSI92 compliant - in 2006, for cripes' sake! That's why I prefer a REAL database engine, like Oracle or MS SQL Server.

About atomic transactions - those are not supported in the default MySQL storage engine. The transactional engine, InnoDB, is at least ten times as slow as MyISAM, not good for this site which is already much slower than it should be.

Oracle has always been a company that bled its customers dry, but they have released a free version of their database engine last year. Don't know the exact specs and terms of use, but moving to Oracle (we're talking a Linux system here, so MS SQLServer is out of the question) would be a VERY good move.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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