Re: What can we learn from MySQL?

Bruce Momjian wrote:

>Here is a blog about a recent MySQL conference with title, "Why MySQL
>Grew So Fast":
>
>    http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4715
>
>and a a Slashdot discussion about it:
>
>    http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/20/2229212&mode=nested&tid=137&tid=185&tid=187&tid=198
>
>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.
>
>Questions I have are:
>
>    o  Are we marketing ourselves properly?
>    o  Are we focused enough on ease-of-use issues?
>    o  How do we position ourselves against a database that some
>       say is "good enough" (MySQL), and another one that some
>       say is "too much"  (Oracle)
>    o  Are our priorities too technically driven?
>
>
>
Do we care enough about interoperability?

When I ask about non-standard complience of Pg (turning unquoted
identifiers to lowercase instead of uppercase, violating the SQL
standard, and requring an expensive rewrite of clients), and I get the
answer "uppercase is ugly", I think something is wrong.

To be fair, I got a fair amount of legitimate problems with MIGRATING to
standard compliency. I find these issues legitimate, though solveable.
Getting a "we prefer lowercase to the standard", however, means to me
that even if I write a patch to start migration, I'm not likely to get
it in.

          Shachar

--
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting
http://www.lingnu.com/