Re: Uber moving towards MySQL

On 29/07/16 10:12, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 06:24:09AM -0700, Robert Bernier wrote:
>> Although no way near as knowledgeable as many of you regarding the
>> inner workings of MySQL, let alone postgres, I do however recognize
>> navel gazing when I see it. The first article starting this thread was
>> a convoluted justification of one's own religion. This second article
>> is pure commercial leveraging of a thread that's garnered a lot of
>> attention.
>>
>> It's time a response from the postgres community was forthcoming.
> I think this new blog post does a good job of summarizing the issues
> Uber had with Postgres.  The blog comments correct some things, get some
> things wrong, but eventually right.  (The thread about disk performance
> can be ignored.)
>
> In some ways any PR is good PR, and I see the general issue being that
> Uber didn't like some of the technical decisions we made, and tradeoffs
> we decided, but few are saying those decisions were wrong, just focused
> on different workloads.
>
> I do think we are winning when we don't act defensively but are open to
> criticism --- I think it shows confidence, and I think we have a right
> to be confident.
>
While admittedly I'm biased towards pg, my overall impressions from the
threads is that:

 1. The Uber use case is very different from most contexts where pg is
    used & the areas pg has been optimized for

 2. There are real problems with pg that hurt Uber

 3. The above problems are of 2 types: ones that the pg developers seek
    to address, others relate to design decisions in pg that are
    unlikely to be changed

 4. pg developers are committed to learning useful lessons from all
    this, want to clearly identify what needs to be changed and pg
    people are adjusting their focus accordingly without compromising
    other projects underway (measured response rather than a panicky
    reaction)

 5. Some of the reported problems with pg are spurious

 6. there are problems with MySQL that affect Uber, but they seem to
    have been ignored

 7. some of the technical decisions by Uber seem suspect

So overall, I agree with Bruce.


Cheers,
Gavin