The database is only one of a list of important architectural choices. Are you going to use a *nix (Linux, BSD, Solaris...) or Windows? What programming languages? Perl, Python, Java, Visual Basic... Applesoft Basic? Are you going to use a framework or code everything from scratch?
These answers are all important, but it is possible to do a good job or a bad job with any of those languages. Ultimately the choice of platform, languages, database, etc. are not as important as how you put the pieces together.
You might also what other successful sites are using, particularly those with data structures similar to what you are planning. I believe Facebook and Wikipedia both use PHP and MySQL. FlightAware (which does a really super job with lots of real-time data) uses Postgres.
While it is, I'm sure, possible to design a very effective site with almost any combination but Windows/.Net/MSSQL seems like a particularly poor choice. There are only a few big data-driven sites using that technology and most of them aren't technically very good. Myspace is one example - (I think they use MSSQL) - but they have horrible response times and frequent hiccups. Ancestry.com is another big .Net site but they have a lot of problems. Pages frequently hang while loading, response not quick at all and their UI is very awkward. Several of the big airline sites run .Net but they aren't very good either. Big companies whose primary business isn't IT seem to go with .Net a lot and it shows in the quality of their sites - but that's not so bad - it creates a lot of opportunities for people like us. While I'm sure it is POSSIBLE to do good work on the Microsoft platform it seems very, very unlikely.
My personal choice after having worked, at one time or another, with all of the options discussed here is very clearly LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl|PHP|Python but I wouldn't object to substituting BSD, Lighttpd or Postgres.
As someone around here said recently, "...anyone proposing to run Windows on servers should be prepared to explain what they know about servers that Google, Yahoo, and Amazon don't."
I worked in a few corporates and they all seem to favour .Net (for obvious MS support/marketing/mgt related reasons) but most of the solutions seemed to be okay.
Also I notice a trend that if you want to sell to corporates/companies they prefer .Net solutions as it ties in better with what they use (most business still uses MS, like it or not) and are more reluctant to go with opensource based solutions.
It sure does look like you're right. I could have sworn I saw .asp pages there when I was a member, but that was probably 4-5 years ago. One less reason to use .net, I guess.
These answers are all important, but it is possible to do a good job or a bad job with any of those languages. Ultimately the choice of platform, languages, database, etc. are not as important as how you put the pieces together.
You might also what other successful sites are using, particularly those with data structures similar to what you are planning. I believe Facebook and Wikipedia both use PHP and MySQL. FlightAware (which does a really super job with lots of real-time data) uses Postgres.
While it is, I'm sure, possible to design a very effective site with almost any combination but Windows/.Net/MSSQL seems like a particularly poor choice. There are only a few big data-driven sites using that technology and most of them aren't technically very good. Myspace is one example - (I think they use MSSQL) - but they have horrible response times and frequent hiccups. Ancestry.com is another big .Net site but they have a lot of problems. Pages frequently hang while loading, response not quick at all and their UI is very awkward. Several of the big airline sites run .Net but they aren't very good either. Big companies whose primary business isn't IT seem to go with .Net a lot and it shows in the quality of their sites - but that's not so bad - it creates a lot of opportunities for people like us. While I'm sure it is POSSIBLE to do good work on the Microsoft platform it seems very, very unlikely.
My personal choice after having worked, at one time or another, with all of the options discussed here is very clearly LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl|PHP|Python but I wouldn't object to substituting BSD, Lighttpd or Postgres.
As someone around here said recently, "...anyone proposing to run Windows on servers should be prepared to explain what they know about servers that Google, Yahoo, and Amazon don't."