Re: Differentiating different Open Source databases

Excerpts from Rob Wultsch On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 10:01 PM:
> ... primary persistent data store for the worlds largest social
>  network
>
> ... primary persistent data store for the worlds largest web
> hosting provider, domain registrar and SSL registrar.
>
> ... primary persistent data store for the largest ad network
>
> ... "Does anyone run a farm with more than 1,000 Postgres
> servers?".
>
> ... if PG was a better solution* it would be used

In some ways you're saying proves Jim's point. A pragmatic definition
of "better" would be "more appropriate" or "a better fit' - a better
fit for the workload or possibly the organisation's existing skills
and along with the skills habits and expectations.

The examples you're quoting above are foreign to decision makers with
a background in commercial RDBMSs like DB/2, MSSQL, etc. Insurance
brokerages with 200 staff members don't care about 1000 server farms -
they want expression indexes, partial indexes, CTEs and a bunch of
other things which they've come to expect from relation databases.

The mistake which these not entirely hypothetical managers (I have met
a few too) are making about in assuming equality between all open
source databases is much as the same as you mistake in claiming that
the features which matter to myfacedoubleclickspacebook are the only
ones that matter.

> *I think that finding people with experience is what is holding PG
> back far more than any technical deficiencies. However awesome a piece
> of software is, it is worthless if it is impossible to find anyone to
> run it.
>
+1

Regards

Bell.