Databases on shared hosting plans

A number of webhost providers have multiple webhosting packages offered to potential website owners. The hosting categorization is typically separated into:

•  Shared Hosting
•  Dedicated Hosting
•  VPS Hosting

However, most individuals and business owners typically do not have enough funds to choose the more expensive hosting packages. This financial limitation results in a high number of website owners that prefer to use shared hosting especially since they are not sure that the existence of the website will be extended beyond the first year.
Shared Hosting
But the value of a shared hosting plan is that it includes the basic requirements of a website owner, which includes:

•  Unlimited disk space
•  Unlimited website bandwidth
•  Unlimited hosting of domain names
•  Email accounts under POP or IMAP
•  The use of MySQL databases

Many are wondering why MySQL databases are included in a basic webhosting package since they believe that this will not be used. This is not the case for any individual or business website since the website owner will still have to save a list of relevant information in tabular format. The use of a MySQL database enhances this minimal requirement especially when taking into consideration that the website will still have a database of the article content or the information of its visitors. This is especially true for a blogging website where the basic requirement is to ask for the name of the visitor as well as their comments or notes.

Website Bandwidth and the Database

The relation of the amount of website bandwidth and the use of a database is dependent on the requirements of the website owner. The reason why it is considered to be practical for webhost providers to make the MySQL database use available to all of its website owners is that it is easier to back it up to the website owner’s personal computer. This is especially true for website owners that regularly like to try out different webhost providers every time they need to renew a webhost package.
The value of the MySQL database is that most webhost providers have limited solutions to back up the website content. Therefore, the use of a database is more practical since it can be easier transferred from webhost provider to webhost provider. Some webhost providers even allow the website owner to directly access their database from the administration management panel or cPanel. Most webhost providers do not automatically allow access to the database and this means that some website owners may have to manually switch this option on or request it from the webhost provider.
Unfortunately for some website owners, the configuration of the database access must be done on the initial development of the website and not after a database is created. The reason for this is that it protects the webhost provider and the website owner from website development problems such as mistakenly doing a wrong configuration for the database access.

Business Websites and Databases

Most business websites are dependent on the use of databases especially with the amount of information needed and being moved around from website owner to the customer. The most significant database for business websites are shopping carts, financial information, and personal customer information. This means that the dynamic content of the website is normally stored in the server database and therefore this can be accessed by the website owner when needed.
Potential Dangers of Information Hacking
Unfortunately, individual, business, and company websites are the ones normally targeted by information hackers. Some reasons why some individuals do website hacking is to acquire information that can be used for malicious acts such as purchasing products and services under the customer name. The result of this is that the customer will acquire additional financial charges on their credit cards that they have never purchased.
This is the reason why most potential customers are wary of purchasing products and services from a website that uses a shared hosting plan. This is especially true for business websites that do not have an established reputation when it comes to financial and personal data security. Webhost providers mitigate this increased customer risk by offering the website owner additional services such as database and website security.

Other Database Hosting Applications

But even though most webhost providers offer the use of MySQL for the database management in individual and business websites, there are other database applications that are available online. Oracle is one of the most popular database solutions since it is perceived to be more reliable, secure, scalable, and has a better performance. This means that website owners can use small single-processor cloud servers to the more complex multi-processor cloud servers. This is easily done without the need to change a single programming code since there are various editions that are available on the market from the standard to the enterprise edition. An Oracle database solution is available for any website owner’s requirement and budget.