Re: Why PostgreSQL is not that popular as MySQL?

Raymond Chui writes:
> I am wonder why most of people choose MySQL in Linux
> world rather than PostgreSQL?

I've bounced between a couple of different DBMS over
the last year, and I have some pretty straightforward
ideas about the relative strengths of the ones I've
worked with:

Oracle:
  Plus: complete, fast, reliable
  Minus: expensive and a PITA to install and administer

MySQL:
  Plus: lightweight, easy to administer, very fast
    with simple queries/updates
  Minus: slow with a mix of complex queries and updates,
    incomplete SQL support.

PostgreSQL:
  Plus: more complete than MySQL, good performance
    under a variety of situations
  Minus: no BLOBs (soon to be rectified, I understand),
    version upgrades require dump/reload.

For most basic web applications, each page needs to be
generated very quickly, which rules out complex queries
and/or updates under almost any engine.  That puts
PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Oracle on a pretty even footing
feature-wise.  MySQL's speed, PostgreSQL's row size limits,
and Oracle's expense make MySQL the best choice for a lot
of simple web applications.

As a previous poster pointed out, a couple of years
ago, a lot of folks were using Berkeley DB as their
storage mechanism; watching those people move to
_any_ relational database is a good sign.  As the
larger population of people working on server-side
systems learns more about relational databases,
they'll outgrow MySQL at some point as well.
Of course, the MySQL developers aren't sitting still;
if they continue to improve MySQL to meet their
user's needs, then in a few years, MySQL could be
just as complete as PostgreSQL.

            - Tim