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Web Hosting - MySQL Database Hosting
Enhanced Pubweb sites may optionally utilize a hosted MySQL database. There is typically no additional charge for database hosting, though large or especially active databases may require a support agreement.
To request a MySQL database, contact the Help Desk after your Enhanced Pubweb site has been created.
Database Connection Information
MySQL databases are not hosted directly on Pubweb. Instead, they're hosted on a dedicated database server. To connect to your specific database, you will need the following information.
- Host name: webdb.ndsu.nodak.edu
- MySQL port: 3306 (this is the default port for MySQL)
- Database name: This will be provided to you at the time your MySQL database is created
- Database user: This will be provided to you at the time your MySQL database is created
- Database password: This will be provided to you at the time your MySQL database is created
Database Engine
MySQL supports multiple different storage formats, which it calls Engines, for its tables. The two most common formats are MyISAM and InnoDB.
Unless you must use MyISAM for one or more tables, we highly recommend that you create your databases using InnoDB format. InnoDB has many advantages over the older MyISAM format, and webdb.ndsu.nodak.edu has been optimized for database tables that use ENGINE=InnoDB. A good starting-point for the MyISAM vs. InnoDB decision is this Percona blog entry.
Character Set and Collation
The current default character encoding, also called character set, for MySQL on webdb.ndsu.nodak.edu is latin1. The current default collation is latin1_swedish_ci.
Each database and table within that database can easily override the defaults at creation time. Unlike the database engine, there's generally no performance impact for choosing any particular character set or collation, so each database should use appropriate settings based on the type of data that will be stored in the database.
Although there is no performance impact for using a non-default character set or collation, it's critically important that all connections to the database also use the same settings. If there is a mismatch between e.g. the web application that's accessing the database and the database, there can be both storage and display issues for some characters. For more information about encoding and display issues, review the web pages below.
For an overview and background on important considerations related to the character set and collation sequence used with storing data in a database, you may wish to review the following articles: