Re: Why facebook used mysql ?

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 10:00 AM, Merlin Moncure <mmoncure@gmail.com> wrote:
> Postgres 7.2 brought non blocking vacuum.   Before that, you could
> pretty much write off any 24x7 duty applications -- dealing with dead
> tuples was just too much of a headache.

Amen!  I remember watching vacuum run alongside other queries and
getting all school-girl giggly over it.  Seriously it was a big big
change for pgsql.

> The mysql of the time, 3.23,
> was fast but locky and utterly unsafe.

True, it was common to see mysql back then just stop, dead.  Go to
bring it back up and have to repair tables.

> Postgres has been relatively disadvantaged in terms of administrative
> overhead which is a bigger deal than sql features, replication,
> performance, etc for high load website type cases.

I would say it's a bigger problem for adoption than for high load
sites.  If Joe User spends an hour a day keeping his database on his
workstation happy, he's probably not happy.  If Joe Admin spends an
hour a day keeping his 100 machine db farm happy, he's probably REALLY
happy that it only takes so long.