Re: Postgres v MySQL 5.0

On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 04:22:11AM -0800, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>
> >>Dev: PostgreSQL is slow
> >>Me: What seems to be the problem
> >>Dev: I am using Hibernate and my queries are slow
> >>Me: Do you vacuum? Did you analyze? What does the explain say?
> >>Dev: parse error
> >>Me: ??maintenance
> >>Dev: You mean there is stuff you have to do to the database beside
> >>Hibernate config?
> >>Me: /quit
> >>
> >
> >You're entitled to your opinion, but from an advocacy perspective, that's
> >a terrible response and a terrible attitude. Our goal should be to educate
> >and encourage newbies, not laugh at them and drive them off. Unfortunately,
> >I see too much of the latter, and not enough of the former, including on
> >this very list.
> >
> I have spent more time than is probably healthy helping newbies on these
> lists and various support channels.
> This isn't about helping newbies, I am 100% happy to help newbies. My
> point in this thread is not about
> newbies. My point is about irresponsibility of developers, specifically
> professional developers  and lack of
> willingness to actually understand your platform.
>
> If you say, I am a developer... you are not a newbie. You may be new to
> the platform, but if you are actually
> a developer you are more than smart enough and you have a
> *responsibility* to make sure you understand
> that platform.

That's making the (in my experience false) assumption that your average
app developer has any clue about databases. Most app developers can
string together simple DML and DDL, and *maybe* have some concept of
normalization. This is simply because they have no desire to become
database people; they just want to get their app written.

One of the best things the community could do would be to help educate
these people on basic database concepts and pitfalls, such as why
concurrency is almost always more important than single-connection
performance. Or why you want to keep the number of round-trips to the
database to a minimum. Or why ACID is important for apps other than
banking. Etc., etc.
--
Jim Nasby                                            jim@nasby.net
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)