Re: Which database part 2

-----Original Message-----
From: Kaarel [mailto:kaarel@future.ee]
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 2:17 PM
To: pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org
Subject: [pgsql-advocacy] Which database part 2

This is the follow up for my post a few days ago. First I want to thank
everybody for their great replies. I must admit that I did ask the same
question in MySQL list and also had many replies. From their perspective

the only thing that PostgreSQL has and MySQL does not have is more
features. In fact here's a short summary of the ideas from MySQL list:

-MySQL is simple, powerful, indestructible.
-PostgreSQL is very highly featured, but not as fast and not as rugged.
-MySQL ran on NT with no fuss, while you needed cygwin and whatnot to
run PostgreSQL.
-PostgreSQL seemed to require more administration than MySQL.
-If you need to work with extremely large databases (multi GB) I would
go with MySQL.  It scales to large files extremely well.
-There seems to be much less support for PostgreSQL than MySQL, be it
from books or other users.
-MySQL has better support, larger community and better documentation.

These are randomly orderered and posted by various MySQL list users. I
thought it would be nice for part 2 to have PostgreSQL users comment
these replies.

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The truth:
MySQL is simple.
MySQL is powerful (but not as powerful as postgres)
MySQL runs on NT with no fuss, does require cygwin for the shell (this
is nitpicking), although uses OS managed file caching, this can cause
problems.
MySQL has a larger community.
MySQL probably has better support, if you pay for the commercial
license.  Otherwise its roughly equal.  I will say that postgres tends
to attract a more highly skilled pool of developers (thus smaller).

The untruth:
MySQL is not indestructible.  Pull out the power cord while writing with
mysql, postgres and compare results.  Administration is almost exactly
the same.  You install (actually usually preinstalled), create database,
optionally add users, and enter SQL commands for both databases.
MySQL does not 'scale' well with large files.  Scaling with concurrent
transactions is much more interesting anyways. (postgres has this hands
down).

Most things are rather subjective (speed), except for the ruggedness.
On this single point postgres is the preferred solution.

Merlin