Message Boards, Users, and Fragmentation

[d'Anconia]

I am looking to start a website that, for lack of a better term, can be compared to IMDb (Internet Movie Databse) and Amazon in a few relevant ways:

-Individual pages should each have their own forum (like how each film has a message board on IMDb and each products has one on Amazon).
- Website users should be able to write reviews as well as make posts within the forums.
- I need to make sure that the user accounts for writing reviews and whatnot are the same ones used in the message boards.

Are services like vBulleting good for this use? I have seen instances where users have to use a different login / username from the website to actually log into the message board system. Can I use the same MySQL databases for both the message board system and the rest of the website? Do the subscription services (ie vBulleting and other big message board services) allow for this?

I can't help but look at large websites and notice that they have their own unique / distinct message boards. Why do they usually do this? So that they have more control or what?

[alhera]

You can use same mysql database for both of your message boards. You can display two messageboard services with this system. Moreover you can know details about this from others sites related to this through search to search engines.

[d'Anconia]

Okay, thank you Alhera! This should make things easier so that I won't have to maintain two separate user databases.