Re: Feedback from LinuxWorld, London

On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 02:44:29PM -0300, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Oct 2005, Jim C. Nasby wrote:
>
> >On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 07:19:47PM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> >>>- Many current MySQL users would like to adopt PostgreSQL but feel
> >>>unable to do so because their application package does not support
> >>>PostgreSQL at all/well enough or they feel there are technical issues
> >>>with the MySQL to PostgreSQL code (not data) migration.
> >>
> >>And of course they are right.  Porting from MySQL to PostgreSQL is a
> >>problem, one which could only be solved by dumbing down PostgreSQL to
> >>accept many of MySQL's idiosyncracies, which isn't going to happen.
> >
> >There are many features that could be implimented in PostgreSQL in a way
> >that was both logical and supported MySQL converters, though. The recent
> >discussion on one of the lists about adding enum as a type is an
> >example. I'm sure there are others.
> >
> >I think the best way to increase migration from MySQL to PostgreSQL
> >would be to find out what the biggest pains are for users attempting to
> >migrate and then figure out how we can reduce that pain. In some cases
> >these solutions might be adding features to PostgreSQL, but many of them
> >might just involve improving existing migration tools.
>
> Couldn't these features be mostly added as a 'MySQL Compatibility add-on'?
> For instance, the enum type you list above ... ?

There's issues with doing that. I know one problem is that you currently
can't pass parameters in when you define a column in a table, which you
need to be able to do for an enum.

But like I said, if we want to improve migration we should find out
where the users have pain and concentrate on that. That was actually the
context of the enum discussion. I threw enum out as an example and
everyone latched onto it, missing the overall point of trying to improve
migration from MySQL.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant      jnasby@pervasive.com
Pervasive Software      http://pervasive.com    work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf       cell: 512-569-9461