Friends,

I wanted to implement a LAMP application development in our organization. I've done a lot of applications in VB6. Someone told me that if you use a certain mysql version, it will be difficult to port it into a higher version? How true is this? I mean is it really hard to port previous databases that was constructed in the previous mysql version into a current version? I mean what can mysql version can you suggest? I opt to trying the latest mysql version but what version is more stable and easy to restore on other versions? How about PHP, does my code writen on 4 won't work on 5? Someone also suggested that I use 1.3 rather than the latest version of 2.0. I've also browsed thru the net and found xampp which contains (PHP 4 and 5, MySQL 5, Apache 2). But my friend suggested not to use it and he told me to compile from source. I'm really new in these technologies so I hope someone can help me. Thanks.

depam,
I am not full time developer but I have some comment about your post.
1. So far Mysql is quite stable, I'd test version 3/5 with huge data, result seems ok (My
vendor event use mysql v4 to keep larger data than myself).
2. I have never upgrade database before, but I believe it is not big deal if you google it,
probably you just need to use mysqldump will do the job.
3. I will suggest you to use mysql v5, it support store procedure to make your job easier.
4. sometimes php 4 won't work in php5. In my opinion, try to use current version in your
development, so next time you no need to worry about migrade the database, source code
and etc. Same with apache, because your are not using other people product but your own
source code.
5. I don't know xampp, can you let us know what distro you use so others can give opinion.

Regards,
Ks

Thanks. Regarding xampp, you just need to unpack xampp and the LAMP packages are already installed on it. You just need to run a simple script and LAMP services will be restarted. Try to google on xampp and you can easily get it. As far as I know, xampp works on all distros, even Windows.

As detailed on http://www.mysql.com/products/database/, there are quite a few MySql versions.
The community version is free. Download the current stable release.
v5 is definitely better than v4, thanks to support. Check out the details on mysql.com if you need to know the exact changes.
I recently upgraded from v4 to v5 too and it was a breaze, using mysqldump to dump the v4 database and then import it into the v5. Worked like a charm.

Details on apache can be found on apache.org. There are plenty sites with details on PhP and 4th and 5th version.

In general, compiling packages from source gives you more flexibility (ie you can set the options you need, define where the programs are compiled, etc), but it's harder if can be a little tricky at times. VB6 programming experience won't help you much with this, in my humble opinion.
Binary, pre-compiled, packages are easier to install, but don't offer all the flexibility.
If you want a standard LAMP server, I recommend sticking to installing from packages and only compiling from source if you really need to.

A lot of Linux sites offer how-to's, tutorials, and stuff like that. Examples are tldp.org and this site's tutorials.