MySQL vs PostgreSQL (was "RE: MySQL install from source??")

[Christopher Murtagh]

On Wed, 3 Apr 2002, mike cullerton wrote:
>most people don't need atomicity or rollback. they want to produce web
>pages.

 This is a meaningless statement, equivalent to saying 'most people don't
need stable operating systems, they just want to use their computers'.

 For many people, the features in Postgres are not needed, and in this
case using MySQL makes sense. For instance, if all you are doing is
spewing out read only data from your database, then atomicity and
transactions are obviously not necessary. However, many people these days
are doing a lot more than that with their web sites. If you want to base
your content on user inputted data, then MySQL is more limiting that's all.

>all my sites use mysql. some peppered all day with hundreds of thousands
>of records being replicated over 4 machines. no problems.  many of the
>queries join multiple tables together without any slowness. (btw,
>postgres can't do replication)

 I would tend to think that most people would need atomicity before
replication, again, unless they are doing read-only data.

>mysql rocks.

 Yes it is very good at what it does. However, it isn't in the same class
with Oracle or PostgreSQL, this is why I said they were hard to compare.
FileMaker is really nice too, but I wouldn't want to run a server with it.

>just don't pass fud around about mysql.

 I don't know what you thought was FUD. All I stated were facts, and facts
are not FUD.

Cheers,

Chris

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Christopher Murtagh
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