This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 22:55:29 +0000 From: paul <paul@opencountry.org> To: J C Lawrence <claw@kanga.nu> Cc: Karen Shaeffer <shaeffer@neuralscape.com>, svlug@svlug.org Subject: Re: [svlug] mySQL vs Postgres J C Lawrence wrote: > On Mon, 25 Mar 2002 11:14:55 -0800 > Karen Shaeffer <shaeffer@neuralscape.com> wrote: > > >>Which platform (mySQL or Postgres) has the larger developer and user >>bases? Ultimately the feature trajectory of a platform is quite >>important in considering which is best to commit to working with? >> > > PostgresQL has the more active mailing lists AFAICT. MySQL has done > more substantive changes to their code base in less time recently. > PostgresQL has been concentrating on stability, bug fixes and > scalability almost to exclusion for a little over a year now, so that > may explain the difference. We were making a decision on this some years back and a Google search turned up 10X the hits for MySQL over Postgres (120,000 vs 12,000). Now it's about 7X (4,500,00 vs. 672,000). That indicates that either one has all the support you need. The real issue is what kind of data are you working with/on? Relational theory works very well on most businees/organizational databases. If you are doing some business app. then go with MYSQL. If you are doing research and have complex data with complex structures then you want either a networked database or an object database. Postgres fills the bill for an object database. The PickOS has a kind of network database but I don't know of any in open source. BTW, in 1985, the number one software company in the world was Cullinet with the IDMS networked database. It disappeared into software hell at Computer Associates in 1989 along with many other database. Ingres lives on there as Jasmine(?) === Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 23:24:18 -0800 From: Joe Brenner <doom@kzsu.stanford.edu> To: svlug@svlug.org Subject: [svlug] Re: mySQL vs Postgres (Karen Shaeffer) Karen Shaeffer <shaeffer@neuralscape.com> wrote: > Which platform (mySQL or Postgres) has the larger developer and user > bases? Ultimately the feature trajectory of a platform is quite > important in considering which is best to commit to working with? I can understand why you'd be worried about issues like this, but I think you'll find the there isn't a big enough difference between the two camps for this to be a crucial point in this case. I'm a big postgresql booster, myself... I eavesdrop on the postgresql-hackers list, and I'm very much impressed with the team working on postgresql development. They've made tremendous amounts of progress in the last two years in improving speed, stability, and compliance with the SQL standard, as well as removing some assorted gotchas. For example, the pesky row size limit is long gone, and the latest version (7.2) now has VACUUM working as a background process (previously the table-lock required by VACUUM caused some problems with 24/7 use). On the other hand, MySQL had a definite stability advantage back in the early days of the web, so it *could* be that there's some software package you want to use that was designed to work only with MySQL. That would be the main reason that I would consider running MySQL, myself. For example, if I wanted to use the Slash code, I'd want to double check that the postgresql support that they've added really does work... I have to say that I got a really bad impression of the MySQL crew a few years back when they had a reputation for pushing some serious bullshit about relational database practice (transactions? referential integrity? Aww, you don't need that junk). Since that time they've cleaned up their act a bit, and covered a lot of bullet points... maybe the bolted on stuff (uh, I mean "modular design") actually works well these days, I'm not interested enough to try it for myself. ===