On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 12:24:12PM -0500, Jesse Erlbaum wrote: > Hi John -- > > > The clear choice from these responses is Postgres because of > > its internal > > strength over MySql > > I've used both MySQL and PgSQL. I've also used Oracle, Sybase, DB2, MS > SQL Server, and Informix. I've also been developing web apps for quite > a long time, so I feel my opinions carry *some* weight.
Just look at the list of companies that use mysql. Would google and yahoo use it if it werent up to par? > > That, in a nutshell, is MySQL. Features such as "offset/limit" (which > were practically invented by MySQL, which are not standard SQL, which > don't exist in Oracle, and only exist in PgSQL because they were so > damned useful) are a classic example of why MySQL is the most popular > database in the whole world for web applications. It is the right tool > for the job. Same with the "auto increment" columns. A feature which > didn't exist in Oracle-like databases, but was a practical solution > which made life that much more easy. Dont forget that time(less typing) saving replace command. > > There are dozens of other examples like these (such as the MySQL > interactive shell, which beats the pants off of sqlplus, or mysqldump > which annihilates pg_dump). The theme here is that MySQL was created to > be three things: > > 1. Simple > 2. Reliable > 3. Fast > > Let's not forget that the "P" in Perl stands for "Practical". PgSQL was > created as an academic exercise: "Can we write our own Oracle?" If I > wanted to be "academically correct", I'd be programming in Java. I > don't, and I'm not. > > > And, BTW: Nearly all those advanced, "academically correct" features > which people point to when pimping PgSQL (row-level locking, stored > procs, transactions, triggers, ref. integrity checking, clustering, > etc.) are available for MySQL right now, or are slated to be available > in the next release. However, PgSQL is still slow, hard to use, and of > questionable reliability. MySql has really caught up stored procedures, views, and triggers are new features in 5.0 while replication (since 3.xx), clustering (since 4.1), transactional table types (innodb since 3.xx), have been around for a while. Even with all these new features mysql is still blazing fast. Aaron Dancygier
