My question is, "What can we learn from MySQL?" I don't know there is anything, but I think it makes sense to ask the question.
MySQL was my first introduction to SQL databases (I had dabbled with Clipper and Foxpro years earlier, but only for a couple of months and had forgotten most of it by then). So practically all I knew about SQL and RDBMS I got from the MySQL manual. IIRC, MySQL has a chapter for beginners, on how to create your first database and tables, how to insert a record, etc.
I see that the Pg manual already has that. Good.
The problem is that, since MySQL was my only SQL database I knew for a long time, I didn't know that an RDBMS can be [much] more than what MySQL was/is. I could only do simple SELECTs (no JOINs, let alone subselect since MySQL doesn't support it) but found it sufficient, since I did most of the hard work from Perl/PHP (for example, doing an adjacency tree query by several SELECTs and combining the results myself from the client side).
I didn't know squat about stored procedures or triggers or check constraints. I had no idea what a foreign key is -- and when MySQL manual says it's not necessary, slow, and evil, I believed it.
I never bothered checking out other databases until I started reading more about transactions, reliability, Date/Codd, and other more theoretical stuffs. Only then I started trying out Interbase, Firebird, SAPDB, DB2, Oracle, and later Pg.
So in my opinion, as long as the general awareness about RDBMS (on what tasks/responsibilities it should do, what features it generally has to have, etc) is low, people will be looking at MySQL as "good enough" and will not be motivated to look around for something better. As a comparison, I'm always amazed by people who use Windows 95/98/Me. They find it normal/"good enough" that the system crashes every now and then, has to be rebooted every few hours (or every time they install something). They don't know of anything better.
So perhaps the direction of advocacy should be towards increasing that awareness?
-- dave
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