Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Mar 15, 2008, at 8:58 AM, Ron Mayer wrote: Greg Smith wrote: On Fri, 14 Mar 2008, Andrej Ricnik-Bay wrote: A silly question in this context: If we know of a company that does use PostgreSQL but doesn't list it anywhere ... can we take the liberty to publicise this somewhere anyway? I notice Oracle (and sleepycat before them) had a lot of fun pointing out when Microsoft uses BDB. http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/07-jan/o17opensource.html You'll find Oracle Berkeley DB under the hood in everything from Motorola cell phones, Microsoft/Groove's collaboration suite and it seems unlikely Microsoft gave them their blessings. Bad idea. There are companies who consider being listed as a user of a product a sort of recommendation of that technology, and accordingly Other reasons a company might get offended by this: * They might consider it a trade secret and a competitive advantage over competitors; and internally enjoy giggling when they see their competitors sign deals with expensive databases. * They might have a close business partnership with Microsoft or Oracle that could be strained if they support other databases. I suspect my employer would not like it announced for both reasons. they will get really annoyed...asked to be removed from the list of those using PostgreSQL. ... PostgreSQL inside, it's best not to publish the results unless you like to collect cease desist letters. While I agree companies are likely to get annoyed - just like fast food companies do when you say how much trans-fats their products contain; I'm rather curious what such a ceasedesist letter would say. Probably just a firm, but polite, request to quit it. I'd say that with a completely open piece of software like Postgres, i.e. where no commercial licensing is involved, the question is more ethical than legal. In fact, I can't think of a situation where mind your own business could be take more literally :) Erik Jones DBA | Emma® [EMAIL PROTECTED] 800.595.4401 or 615.292.5888 615.292.0777 (fax) Emma helps organizations everywhere communicate market in style. Visit us online at http://www.myemma.com -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:26:35 -0500 Erik Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: While I agree companies are likely to get annoyed - just like fast food companies do when you say how much trans-fats their products contain; I'm rather curious what such a ceasedesist letter would say. Probably just a firm, but polite, request to quit it. I'd say that with a completely open piece of software like Postgres, i.e. where no commercial licensing is involved, the question is more ethical than legal. In fact, I can't think of a situation where mind your own business could be take more literally :) Sometimes they may also claim trademark or trade secret issues. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drkae - -- The PostgreSQL Company since 1997: http://www.commandprompt.com/ PostgreSQL Community Conference: http://www.postgresqlconference.org/ Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate PostgreSQL political pundit | Mocker of Dolphins -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFH3pQoATb/zqfZUUQRAt8iAJ9yLSuV4LQXeUl238VOk6k9VLwdYACgqdkW bGvcvjIUVMj0VZetffDhYhY= =91uz -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Greg Smith wrote: On Fri, 14 Mar 2008, Andrej Ricnik-Bay wrote: A silly question in this context: If we know of a company that does use PostgreSQL but doesn't list it anywhere ... can we take the liberty to publicise this somewhere anyway? I notice Oracle (and sleepycat before them) had a lot of fun pointing out when Microsoft uses BDB. http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/07-jan/o17opensource.html You'll find Oracle Berkeley DB under the hood in everything from Motorola cell phones, Microsoft/Groove's collaboration suite and it seems unlikely Microsoft gave them their blessings. Bad idea. There are companies who consider being listed as a user of a product a sort of recommendation of that technology, and accordingly Other reasons a company might get offended by this: * They might consider it a trade secret and a competitive advantage over competitors; and internally enjoy giggling when they see their competitors sign deals with expensive databases. * They might have a close business partnership with Microsoft or Oracle that could be strained if they support other databases. I suspect my employer would not like it announced for both reasons. they will get really annoyed...asked to be removed from the list of those using PostgreSQL. ... PostgreSQL inside, it's best not to publish the results unless you like to collect cease desist letters. While I agree companies are likely to get annoyed - just like fast food companies do when you say how much trans-fats their products contain; I'm rather curious what such a ceasedesist letter would say. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Hi, This has been a very interesting thread indeed. I think the popularity of any Big Name $oftware with a 'nice' price tag has also something to do with the fear of taking responsibility for your own actions and decisions. With a Big Name you can always blame them if something goes wrong instead of having to admit that it was you who actually did something stupid. But as said, popular does not necessarily equal to superior. I have used PG since RedHat 6.2 (can't remember the PG version of that time) and now use it on FC, CentOS and Ubuntu. My dbs are not large, the biggest one has sixty odd tables and the biggest table is holding now around 100.000 rows. But I have seen it reach that from zero, with version upgrades and without any real db-related problems. Best regards, -- Aarni Ruuhimäki --- Burglars usually come in through your windows. --- -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
itself open source, you have to pay to get a license. Pay for GPL software? You cannot be serious, GPL has no relation with monetary value. The GPL is a 'Usage License'. If i write GPL software to my clients, should i give it free of charge ?. That's absurd. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 08:08:27PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote: Andrej Ricnik-Bay [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 14/03/2008, rrahul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I see Mysql bosting for Google,Yahoo, Alcatel.. What about Postgres the list is not that impressive. What then? Could it be marketing or the sad results of a avalanche effect? Geee, there's a thought. Marketing. Remember that MySQL AB have a strong financial incentive to make organized efforts to locate and publicize impressive-sounding users of MySQL. (I've heard rumors they even give licensing discounts to companies that will let their names be used like that.) Of course they do. All commercial companies do. It's called marketing. (I know JD is going to say he doesn't. So ok, change that to almost all commercial companies do) Ever heard of Microsoft? Best way to get a 95% discount? That's about it.. //Magnus -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 02:29:07AM +0100, Ivan Sergio Borgonovo wrote: On Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:08:27 -0400 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Andrej Ricnik-Bay [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 14/03/2008, rrahul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I see Mysql bosting for Google,Yahoo, Alcatel.. What about Postgres the list is not that impressive. What then? Could it be marketing or the sad results of a avalanche effect? Geee, there's a thought. Marketing. Remember that MySQL AB have a strong financial incentive to make organized efforts to locate and publicize impressive-sounding users of MySQL. (I've heard rumors they even give licensing discounts to companies that will let their names be used like that.) There is no comparable effort happening on the Postgres side. There are plenty of impressive users of PG too, but they don't have to talk about it. I still find impressing that Google uses MySQL... I can guess why, What makes you so sure Google don't use PostgreSQL *as well*? (hint: we don't force them to tell you about it...) //Magnus -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 6:06 PM, rrahul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks to all you wonderful people out their. I don't know if its your love for Postgres or nepothism that makes it look far superior than mysql. I wouldn't comment on that, but having read so much about MySQL in Postgres' lists, I sure have a disliking for MySQL, so much so that I haven't bothered even downloading and installing it even once!!! Does anyone know of threads in MySQL lists/forums where they run a propaganda against Postgres or if they downplay us? That would be an interesting read! But why does the client list dosen't tell that? I see Mysql bosting for Google,Yahoo, Alcatel.. What about Postgres the list is not that impressive. I would suggest trying to find the customer list of Postgres derivatives, such as EnterpriseDB and Greenplum. There are some pretty big names there too. This, in some ways, recognizes customers' faith in Postgres. Best regards, -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] gmail | hotmail | indiatimes | yahoo }.com EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com 17° 29' 34.37N, 78° 30' 59.76E - Hyderabad * 18° 32' 57.25N, 73° 56' 25.42E - Pune 37° 47' 19.72N, 122° 24' 1.69 W - San Francisco http://gurjeet.frihost.net Mail sent from my BlackLaptop device
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Friday 14. March 2008, Adrian Klaver wrote: Years ago I played around with MySQL because that was what everybody was using. The problem was it did not do what I wanted and Postgres did. That pretty much sums up my experiences too. Back in 2002 when I started fooling around with databases, there wasn't much of a competition, and I used MySQL as 'everybody else' did. But when I reached the point where issues like data integrity started to matter, I was advised to try PostgreSQL. I did, and haven't looked back. That was in 2005, and PostgreSQL was at version 7.4 something. There are several reasons why MySQL have a lot more users than PostgreSQL, and in more than one way the parallel to Microsoft vs. *nix is striking. In the software world, getting a mediocre product on the market early may often be the key to success, and is commonly referred to as the Worse Is Better principle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better Besides, a lot of database users don't really care for the database itself. Notably the object/relational mapping (ORM) camp, like Ruby On Rails, Django, and Catalyst, will consider the DBMS as a dumb storage engine. With that attitude, combined with the fact that most ORM frameworks are written mainly for MySQL, it's no wonder that PostgreSQL doesn't make many inroads here. -- Leif Biberg Kristensen | Registered Linux User #338009 http://solumslekt.org/ | Cruising with Gentoo/KDE My Jazz Jukebox: http://www.last.fm/user/leifbk/ -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:28:37 +0100 Magnus Hagander [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I still find impressing that Google uses MySQL... I can guess why, What makes you so sure Google don't use PostgreSQL *as well*? I'm not sure... in fact I never excluded they could use pg for other stuff... They may use it for collecting payment, counting # of ads/click trough etc... (hint: we don't force them to tell you about it...) So... MySQL forced Google to tell everyone? I think the field of application is pretty different. I'm speculating... They should have a narrow task, they shouldn't be interested in coherency/integrity... just on HA etc... Still I'd be curious to know if people can scale pg to several hundreds(?) machines without loosing the features that differentiate it from other DB... -- Ivan Sergio Borgonovo http://www.webthatworks.it -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Mar 14, 2008, at 7:22 AM, Ivan Sergio Borgonovo wrote: Still I'd be curious to know if people can scale pg to several hundreds(?) machines without loosing the features that differentiate it from other DB... Jan Weick wrote Slony which was released by Affilias who runs the top- level registries for the .info and .org domains (ref: http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2007-12/msg01421.php) . I'd imagine those are some pretty serious set-ups. Erik Jones DBA | Emma® [EMAIL PROTECTED] 800.595.4401 or 615.292.5888 615.292.0777 (fax) Emma helps organizations everywhere communicate market in style. Visit us online at http://www.myemma.com -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Mar 14, 2008, at 3:26 AM, jose javier parra sanchez wrote: itself open source, you have to pay to get a license. Pay for GPL software? You cannot be serious, GPL has no relation with monetary value. The GPL is a 'Usage License'. If i write GPL software to my clients, should i give it free of charge ?. That's absurd. They've gotten around that by making MySQL dual-licensed. If you're going to be using MySQL in a commercial application then you can not use the GPL'd version, you have to use their paid, commercial license. Erik Jones DBA | Emma® [EMAIL PROTECTED] 800.595.4401 or 615.292.5888 615.292.0777 (fax) Emma helps organizations everywhere communicate market in style. Visit us online at http://www.myemma.com -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Gurjeet Singh escribió: I wouldn't comment on that, but having read so much about MySQL in Postgres' lists, I sure have a disliking for MySQL, so much so that I haven't bothered even downloading and installing it even once!!! I have downloaded the source at different periods of time. The first time it was horrid -- they had done a port to Novell recently and had stuffed it with weird macros that made it really unreadable. Oh, and the naming convention for source files was awful. The second time, the macros weren't there (but then, perhaps I looked at a different part of the source). But it was pretty much undocumented -- and the naming convention doesn't help. My guess is that it's written in such a way that you need some sort of roadmap or external file (missing from the GPL source) that makes it hard to understand it. Or perhaps they preprocess a different repository in order to create an obfuscated GPL source tree. (I have a memory of comments in the source that looked like it referred to some internal knowledge base or bug tracking system. But frankly it is a dim memory and could very well be related to the PHP source or MaxDB rather than MySQL.) -- Alvaro Herrera http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/DXLWNGRJD34J Management by consensus: I have decided; you concede. (Leonard Liu) -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Alvaro Herrera [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Gurjeet Singh escribió: I wouldn't comment on that, but having read so much about MySQL in Postgres' lists, I sure have a disliking for MySQL, so much so that I haven't bothered even downloading and installing it even once!!! I have downloaded the source at different periods of time. In connection with my Red Hat duties I've had to look at it occasionally :-(. They definitely have a lower standard for commenting than we do. I sure hope that there is unpublished documentation somewhere ... though their spectacularly bad track record on the 5.0 and 5.1 release series makes one wonder. Maybe the problem is exactly that they have too many engineers who don't understand their own code very well. Or perhaps they preprocess a different repository in order to create an obfuscated GPL source tree. No, the parts of their devel process that are visible (such as the bk commit archives) don't suggest any such thing. It's just ugly code. I'm not sure we should be throwing too many stones, though. It takes a long time to wrap your brain around the PG source code, too. regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Tom Lane wrote: In connection with my Red Hat duties I've had to look at it occasionally :-(. They definitely have a lower standard for commenting than we do. I sure hope that there is unpublished documentation somewhere ... And cut into the very lucrative figuring out the MySQL source code book market?? No way. There have been at least 3 books out in the last year or so on just that topic. Paul -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Erik Jones wrote: They've gotten around that by making MySQL dual-licensed. If you're going to be using MySQL in a commercial application then you can not use the GPL'd version, you have to use their paid, commercial license. My understanding is that's not quite true. The client libraries are GPL, so you can't use them directly, but I don't see what would stop you using their ODBC/JDBC drivers with your non-GPL application (especially if you support other ODBC databases as well). The server can't be bundled in your application, but you can still get the user to install it and use it with your application. Why go to all that fuss, though, when you can just use a database with a more friendly license? For embedding there's SQLite, Firebird, etc, and for standalone work there's PostgreSQL. You'd contribute any changes or patches back to the database developers anyway, after all - if not by way of thanks and the desire to contribute then at least because it's not worth the hassle of maintaining them out-of-tree - so I don't think the DB teams would gain much from the GPL anyway. Speaking of which, thanks to everybody who's worked on PostgreSQL- it's magic, and it's made my latest project at work a lot easier. I keep on finding myself thinking I wish I could do something only to find out that it's been implemented in the next version. For example, now EXECUTE ... INTO has been implemented for 8.3 . It's turning into a seriously impressive database. -- Craig Ringer -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 03:17:27PM +0530, Gurjeet Singh wrote: On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 6:06 PM, rrahul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks to all you wonderful people out their. I don't know if its your love for Postgres or nepothism that makes it look far superior than mysql. I wouldn't comment on that, but having read so much about MySQL in Postgres' lists, I sure have a disliking for MySQL, so much so that I haven't bothered even downloading and installing it even once!!! Does anyone know of threads in MySQL lists/forums where they run a propaganda against Postgres or if they downplay us? That would be an interesting read! Indeed that would. This thread is adding a lot, of what I think is known as confirmation bias, to my personal preference of PG over MySQL. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that I can't be too wrong with my choice, but it also increases my dogmatism. I'm wondering how interesting it would be to put a smallish survey together to see if we can tease things apart. The wording of questions would be fun. Questions like how important is security to you seem somewhat pointless as they're open to *a lot* of interpretation[1] and almost everyone will pick very. A couple of multiple-choice questions I've been able to think of are: 1.a. most people interact with this database directly (i.e. they write SQL) b. the developers interact with the database directly, but the users don't c. neither developers or users interact with the database directly 2.a. the database should stop invalid data from being entered as quickly as possible, aborting transactions immediately b. the database should do it's best to interpret my data in a valid way, only aborting transactions when necessary The second seems very biased, but I've not been able to think of a better way of describing it. I think it could be quite a good description of what most users actually want though! I think the hypothesis would be something along the lines of comparing developer and project requirements with the choice of database implementation. Comments? I was thinking of sending it to other FOSS database mailing lists as I'm not sure how to contact commercial DBs' users. I'm sure that lots of people use both, but the sample will be biased. Sam [1] http://www.eros-os.org/pipermail/cap-talk/2007-December/009460.html -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Alvaro Herrera wrote: You can use CLUSTER reliably only from 7.2 upwards. (Or was it 7.3? I forget). In earlier versions it would lose information about other indexes (i.e. those not being clustered on), foreign keys, inheritance, etc; in other words pretty much a disaster except for the simplest of tables. Interesting historical note, but fortunately largely irrelevant these days. Also, it is MVCC-safe only from 8.3 upwards; on older versions it (incorrectly) deletes dead tuples that are still visible to old transactions. More interesting. I may have a broken mental-model. I *thought* that CLUSTER acquired exclusive locks and that acquisition of the exclusive lock would imply that there couldn't be any transactions accessing that table. Where is my misunderstanding? Of course, the main problem with CLUSTER is that it needs about 2x the disk space of table + indexes. Again checking my mental model. My understanding is that CLUSTER basically recreates the tables and indexes and then swaps the new ones in place of the originals. So ~2x is true for typical tables. But for tables badly bloated by multiple bulk updates or bad vacuum practices CLUSTER should require far less than 2x. Cheers, Steve -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Steve Crawford escribió: Alvaro Herrera wrote: Also, it is MVCC-safe only from 8.3 upwards; on older versions it (incorrectly) deletes dead tuples that are still visible to old transactions. More interesting. I may have a broken mental-model. I *thought* that CLUSTER acquired exclusive locks and that acquisition of the exclusive lock would imply that there couldn't be any transactions accessing that table. Where is my misunderstanding? In that a transaction may have started _before_ the CLUSTER, yet not grabbed any locks on the table yet. CLUSTER completes, releases the lock, and your old transaction visits the table only to find that the tuples it needs are no longer there. (In fact IIRC what happens is that the transaction finds the table empty). Of course, the main problem with CLUSTER is that it needs about 2x the disk space of table + indexes. Again checking my mental model. My understanding is that CLUSTER basically recreates the tables and indexes and then swaps the new ones in place of the originals. So ~2x is true for typical tables. But for tables badly bloated by multiple bulk updates or bad vacuum practices CLUSTER should require far less than 2x. Yeah, that would seem to be correct -- you only need space enough for live tuples. -- Alvaro Herrerahttp://www.CommandPrompt.com/ PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Leif B. Kristensen wrote: On Friday 14. March 2008, Adrian Klaver wrote: Years ago I played around with MySQL because that was what everybody was using. The problem was it did not do what I wanted and Postgres did. That pretty much sums up my experiences too. Back in 2002 when I started fooling around with databases, there wasn't much of a competition, and I used MySQL as 'everybody else' did. But when I reached the point where issues like data integrity started to matter, I was advised to try PostgreSQL. I did, and haven't looked back. That was in 2005, and PostgreSQL was at version 7.4 something. Our issue back then (early part of this decade) was that PostgreSQL didn't run easily on top of MS Windows and I didn't yet have any Linux boxes that I could run it on. It wasn't until 8.0 that we finally started playing with pgsql in earnest. We also now have Linux servers installed, which makes things easier on a lot of fronts. (We'll be migrating our small MySQL install over to postgresql this year. The public site is still based on MS SQL and hosts a few dozen GB worth of data, but we have plans to migrate that to pgsql as well once we have more experience with it.) -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Fri, 2008-03-14 at 08:43 -0700, Steve Crawford wrote: Also, it is MVCC-safe only from 8.3 upwards; on older versions it (incorrectly) deletes dead tuples that are still visible to old transactions. More interesting. I may have a broken mental-model. I *thought* that CLUSTER acquired exclusive locks and that acquisition of the exclusive lock would imply that there couldn't be any transactions accessing that table. Where is my misunderstanding? Here's a scenario: - transaction A starts to read table A; - transaction B starts, deletes some records from table B, end ends; - transaction C starts and clusters table B; - transaction A finished reading table A, and now tries to read the records just deleted by transaction B; Question: under MVCC rules should transaction A see the deleted records or not ? Unfortunately I don't know for sure the answer, but if it is yes, then bad luck for transaction A, because cluster just ate them. And the locking will not help this... Cheers, Csaba. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
My understanding is that's not quite true. The client libraries are GPL, so you can't use them directly, but I don't see what would stop you using their ODBC/JDBC drivers with your non-GPL application (especially if you support other ODBC databases as well). The server can't be bundled in your application, but you can still get the user to install it and use it with your application. According to the MySQL license info ( http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/commercial-license.html ): When your application is not licensed under either the GPL-compatible Free Software License as defined by the Free Software Foundation or approved by OSI, and you intend to or you may distribute MySQL software, you must first obtain a commercial license to the MySQL product. Typical examples of MySQL distribution include: * *Selling software that includes MySQL* to customers who install the software on their own machines. * Selling software that *requires customers to install MySQL themselves *on their own machines. * Building a hardware system that includes MySQL and selling that hardware system to customers for installation at their own locations. It sure sounds like if your application uses MySQL and you sell your software (I presume this would include online services that charge for use of the site and that site runs MySQL under the hood), you have to buy a commercial license, and you can't get around it just by not directly distributing MySQL and having your customer install it separately. Way off topic for PG, though, which has a great OSS license in BSD. David
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 4:34 PM, David Wall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My understanding is that's not quite true. The client libraries are GPL, so you can't use them directly, but I don't see what would stop you using their ODBC/JDBC drivers with your non-GPL application (especially if you support other ODBC databases as well). The server can't be bundled in your application, but you can still get the user to install it and use it with your application. According to the MySQL license info ( http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/commercial-license.html ): When your application is not licensed under either the GPL-compatible Free Software License as defined by the Free Software Foundation or approved by OSI, and you intend to or you may distribute MySQL software, you must first obtain a commercial license to the MySQL product. Typical examples of MySQL distribution include: Selling software that includes MySQL to customers who install the software on their own machines. Selling software that requires customers to install MySQL themselves on their own machines. Building a hardware system that includes MySQL and selling that hardware system to customers for installation at their own locations. It sure sounds like if your application uses MySQL and you sell your software (I presume this would include online services that charge for use of the site and that site runs MySQL under the hood), you have to buy a commercial license, and you can't get around it just by not directly distributing MySQL and having your customer install it separately. I imagine you can get round the second one by building your software so it supports PostgreSQL as well - that way you don't 'require customes to install MySQL'. As for the hardware one, well, that just confirms everything I previously thought about MySQL that is unrepeatable where minors may be reading. -- Dave Page EnterpriseDB UK Ltd: http://www.enterprisedb.com PostgreSQL UK 2008 Conference: http://www.postgresql.org.uk -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
I imagine you can get round the second one by building your software so it supports PostgreSQL as well - that way you don't 'require customes to install MySQL'. Well, I'm not sure how they'd even know you were doing this, but as a commercial company, I'd suggest you not follow that advice since the code would not work without install MySQL. Yes, they could install PG instead, and if they did, MySQL would have no problem. But if you use MySQL, then clearly it's required and a commercial license would be required (though perhaps at least you'd put the legal obligation on the end customer). Of course, all of this is based on reading their high level stuff, not the actual legal document that may be tighter or looser. That fact that there's so much confusion and so many instances in which commercial licenses would be required that I say they are only open source in self-branding, not reality. David -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Steve Crawford [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Alvaro Herrera wrote: Of course, the main problem with CLUSTER is that it needs about 2x the disk space of table + indexes. Again checking my mental model. My understanding is that CLUSTER basically recreates the tables and indexes and then swaps the new ones in place of the originals. So ~2x is true for typical tables. But for tables badly bloated by multiple bulk updates or bad vacuum practices CLUSTER should require far less than 2x. Another point to keep in mind is that creation of a new btree index (and, soon, a new hash index) involves a temporary sort file that's roughly the size of the index. So the peak transient space demand is size of compacted table + size of compacted indexes + size of largest index, more or less. (I suppose it'd depend on the order in which the indexes get rebuilt.) regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On 14 Mar, 09:26, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (jose javier parra sanchez) wrote: itself open source, you have to pay to get a license. Pay for GPL software? You cannot be serious, GPL has no relation with monetary value. The GPL is a 'Usage License'. If i write GPL software to my clients, should i give it free of charge ?. That's absurd. Yes, it's nice to see the standard licensing rumours spread around completely unconstrained by inconvenient things like the facts. Of course you can charge people for GPL-licensed software, but you have to promise to let them have the source code at no additional cost. And the mere existence of your GPL-licensed software doesn't mean that you are obliged to give random inquirers the source code: it's only if you've already distributed the software to people that they have the right to the source. http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney As for things like contributor agreements, that has nothing to do with the licence and whether a product is Free Software or not: it's a copyright thing; various permissively licensed projects have contributor agreements, too. Naturally, the MySQL corporate entity want people to assign copyright to them so that they can then offer the code under a proprietary licence, but there would be nothing to stop you from just forking MySQL and offering it as a purely GPL- licensed product. And with respect to the MySQL corporate policy on using their product in proprietary software, I believe that the reason why the client libraries are GPL-licensed is precisely because nobody bought their case for insisting that merely using the database system from a program creates a GPL-licensed derived work consisting of MySQL and the program. By linking to the client libraries, however, you are creating a GPL-licensed derived work in a situation that the FSF would actually go along with. The recent tendency of differentiation between the commercial and open source editions would also indicate that people aren't really believing the MySQL corporate spin, either. Here's an example of the smoke and mirrors: http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?4,31,888#msg-888 In some businesses with a dual-licensing model, I think it can be the case that some people in sales/marketing/licensing like to make claims that wouldn't stand up to thorough scrutiny, but where customers probably aren't going to risk making a fuss if the licensing costs are relatively low. Really, the MySQL people would have more credibility if they just charged for support and bug-fixing and/or used something like the Affero GPLv3 instead of the vanilla GPL, rather than trying to ride two quite different horses. Paul P.S. It's not that I use MySQL, being happy with PostgreSQL, but people should at least try and understand the licensing issues involved. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 10:34 AM, David Wall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It sure sounds like if your application uses MySQL and you sell your software (I presume this would include online services that charge for use of the site and that site runs MySQL under the hood), you have to buy a commercial license, and you can't get around it just by not directly distributing MySQL and having your customer install it separately. No, selling services that rely on mysql is not the same as selling software that relies on mysql. It's only when you sell or distrubute software that you have to worry about the GPL. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Craig Ringer) writes: Erik Jones wrote: They've gotten around that by making MySQL dual-licensed. If you're going to be using MySQL in a commercial application then you can not use the GPL'd version, you have to use their paid, commercial license. My understanding is that's not quite true. The client libraries are GPL, so you can't use them directly, but I don't see what would stop you using their ODBC/JDBC drivers with your non-GPL application (especially if you support other ODBC databases as well). The server can't be bundled in your application, but you can still get the user to install it and use it with your application. Well, there's a certain amount of distance between expectations and legal requirements, and lots of room for weasel wording... http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?4,31,888#msg-888 http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/ According to the above things that MySQL AB has said/continues to say, it is quite clear that the owners of the code *intend* that commercial users should pay them a licensing fee, -- (format nil [EMAIL PROTECTED] cbbrowne cbbrowne.com) http://linuxdatabases.info/info/x.html Blessed are those who backup daily; for they shall be restored. -- Seen in .signature of Veritas rep -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 11:57 AM, Chris Browne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Craig Ringer) writes: Erik Jones wrote: They've gotten around that by making MySQL dual-licensed. If you're going to be using MySQL in a commercial application then you can not use the GPL'd version, you have to use their paid, commercial license. My understanding is that's not quite true. The client libraries are GPL, so you can't use them directly, but I don't see what would stop you using their ODBC/JDBC drivers with your non-GPL application (especially if you support other ODBC databases as well). The server can't be bundled in your application, but you can still get the user to install it and use it with your application. Well, there's a certain amount of distance between expectations and legal requirements, and lots of room for weasel wording... http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?4,31,888#msg-888 http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/ According to the above things that MySQL AB has said/continues to say, it is quite clear that the owners of the code *intend* that commercial users should pay them a licensing fee, Read this earlier response where Zak makes it quite clear that web services that are run in house do not violate the GPL terms for the distribution of MySQL. http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?4,31,63#msg-63 -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 5:07 PM, David Wall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I imagine you can get round the second one by building your software so it supports PostgreSQL as well - that way you don't 'require customes to install MySQL'. Well, I'm not sure how they'd even know you were doing this, but as a commercial company, I'd suggest you not follow that advice since the code would not work without install MySQL. Yes, they could install PG instead, and if they did, MySQL would have no problem. But if you use MySQL, then clearly it's required and a commercial license would be required (though perhaps at least you'd put the legal obligation on the end customer). Huh? I'm suggesting that you write your code to be database-independent such that it is the user's choice what DBMS he uses. That way you aren't 'requiring them to install MySQL'. MySQL cannot hold you liable if a customer chooses to use your closed source Java/JDBC app with their DBMS if you didn't require it. -- Dave Page EnterpriseDB UK Ltd: http://www.enterprisedb.com PostgreSQL UK 2008 Conference: http://www.postgresql.org.uk -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Dave Page wrote: On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 5:07 PM, David Wall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I imagine you can get round the second one by building your software so it supports PostgreSQL as well - that way you don't 'require customes to install MySQL'. Well, I'm not sure how they'd even know you were doing this, but as a commercial company, I'd suggest you not follow that advice since the code would not work without install MySQL. Yes, they could install PG instead, and if they did, MySQL would have no problem. But if you use MySQL, then clearly it's required and a commercial license would be required (though perhaps at least you'd put the legal obligation on the end customer). Huh? I'm suggesting that you write your code to be database-independent such that it is the user's choice what DBMS he uses. That way you aren't 'requiring them to install MySQL'. MySQL cannot hold you liable if a customer chooses to use your closed source Java/JDBC app with their DBMS if you didn't require it. Yes, that is MySQL's licensing angle. I have spoken numerous times to MySQL staff about it. So what ended up happening for my software development was it became a waste of time to support MySQL and PostgreSQL, I moved to PostgreSQL solely which didn't have any of those restrictions associated with it. Which is how I got into PostgreSQL in the first place. And now I use MySQL when I have to because PostgreSQL does the job for me and I'm used to writing SQL, plpgsql and the like for it. Russell Smith -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Donnerstag, 13. März 2008, Scott Marlowe wrote: | My real complaint with InnoDB is it's a red headed step child. If | mysql supported only innodb, it would be a very different database, | and probably a bit simpler as well. no need to worry about how you | state fk-pk relationships (currently column level references are | silently dropped for innodb OR myisam). If there was a run time | switch that said use only innodb and use syntax that's sane I'd | probably be willing to test that out. To be fair, MySQL-5 has such a switch (kind of): http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/faqs-sql-modes.html You can set the @@sql_mode variable to a value, that MySQL almost behaves like standard SQL (I've not tested this by myself, though). Ciao, Thomas -- Thomas Pundt [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://rp-online.de/ -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 1:25 AM, Thomas Pundt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Donnerstag, 13. März 2008, Scott Marlowe wrote: | My real complaint with InnoDB is it's a red headed step child. If | mysql supported only innodb, it would be a very different database, | and probably a bit simpler as well. no need to worry about how you | state fk-pk relationships (currently column level references are | silently dropped for innodb OR myisam). If there was a run time | switch that said use only innodb and use syntax that's sane I'd | probably be willing to test that out. To be fair, MySQL-5 has such a switch (kind of): http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/faqs-sql-modes.html You can set the @@sql_mode variable to a value, that MySQL almost behaves like standard SQL (I've not tested this by myself, though). Sadly running in ansi mode only fixes about half the problems. The FK-PK syntax on a column level is still ignored in ansi sql mode, and a lot of other issues are still there. Admittedly, it does do things like check ints for sane input values, and refuses to truncate varchars silently if they're too large. But that's the kind of thing you really shouldn't have to be turning on in the first place. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
At 11:37 AM 3/13/2008, Scott Marlowe wrote: I remember seeing something about some problems that using the tablespace per table option on some mysql site... goes to look... paraphrased from the Mysql Performance Blod... Using the innodb_file_per_table=1 setting really tends to work against you, as you tend to get lots of bloated tables over time. If all your innodb tables are in the same file, then when one frees space, another can use it. with files per table, you can't recover space this way. With separate files per table, the space returns to the filesystem if you run optimize table (something like vacuum full). In contrast when you have a single 70GB file with all the tables, it NEVER shrinks unless you drop the entire database and reload it. That could take more time than you get from the Boss/Customer standing behind you (and asking every 5 minutes - Is it back up yet?). Also if you do that huge file thing: 1) From my experience, deleting stuff from innodb tables doesn't free space up to be used by other tables, you still need to run optimize table. 2) I suspect even if you do optimize table, often fragmentation or something happens so not all space can be reclaimed - so that huge file will tend to grow faster than your data does. 3) Depending on how much free _usable_ space there actually is left in that huge file, optimize table could cause the single huge file to get bigger because it makes a copy of the entire table. 4) The times when most admins want to do optimize table are often the very times where 2)+3) could cause major unhappiness ;). If you use innodb_file_per_table=1, you have a better idea of how much space each table takes up, so you can figure out which tables you should start with first and schedule shorter periods of time to run optimize table on each table. That said, many times it's just postponing the inevitable - you regularly get some pain (optimize locks the table), the pain gradually increases as your tables get bigger :). Hopefully by the time the pain is a lot, people would have come up with better alternatives. Currently postgresql's vacuum full also locks the affected tables. Does 8.3 vacuum full effectively make a copy of the entire table? How much extra space will the various vacuums use while vacuuming? Regards, Link. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Thanks to all you wonderful people out their. I don't know if its your love for Postgres or nepothism that makes it look far superior than mysql. But why does the client list dosen't tell that? I see Mysql bosting for Google,Yahoo, Alcatel.. What about Postgres the list is not that impressive. Are their any major implementations that moved from Mysql to Postgres? Howmany out their have done this or will advice to do that? cheers, Rahul. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/postgre-vs-MySQL-tp15976517p16024988.html Sent from the PostgreSQL - general mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Currently postgresql's vacuum full also locks the affected tables. Does 8.3 vacuum full effectively make a copy of the entire table? How much extra space will the various vacuums use while vacuuming? As to 8.3 and how it handles vacuum-full internally, I can't say for certain without reading the notes. I suspect it is an in-place operation similar to prior versions. But if you are running PG 7.0 or later (maybe even earlier, I didn't look) and have enough disk space to replicate the table, you can use CLUSTER to do a copy-to-new file and delete old file operation. It does still lock the table and it does require that the table have an index based on which it will physically reorder the table but it is usually _way_ faster and you get fresh indexes as a bonus. IOW, PG offers you the choice to pick whichever is best for you. Cheers, Steve -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Steve Crawford escribió: Currently postgresql's vacuum full also locks the affected tables. Does 8.3 vacuum full effectively make a copy of the entire table? How much extra space will the various vacuums use while vacuuming? As to 8.3 and how it handles vacuum-full internally, I can't say for certain without reading the notes. I suspect it is an in-place operation similar to prior versions. VACUUM FULL is in 8.3 pretty much the same that's on previous versions. You are advised to stay away from it, though, as much as possible. But if you are running PG 7.0 or later (maybe even earlier, I didn't look) and have enough disk space to replicate the table, you can use CLUSTER to do a copy-to-new file and delete old file operation. It does still lock the table and it does require that the table have an index based on which it will physically reorder the table but it is usually _way_ faster and you get fresh indexes as a bonus. You can use CLUSTER reliably only from 7.2 upwards. (Or was it 7.3? I forget). In earlier versions it would lose information about other indexes (i.e. those not being clustered on), foreign keys, inheritance, etc; in other words pretty much a disaster except for the simplest of tables. Also, it is MVCC-safe only from 8.3 upwards; on older versions it (incorrectly) deletes dead tuples that are still visible to old transactions. Of course, the main problem with CLUSTER is that it needs about 2x the disk space of table + indexes. -- Alvaro Herrerahttp://www.CommandPrompt.com/ The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Thursday 13 March 2008 5:36 am, rrahul wrote: Thanks to all you wonderful people out their. I don't know if its your love for Postgres or nepothism that makes it look far superior than mysql. But why does the client list dosen't tell that? I see Mysql bosting for Google,Yahoo, Alcatel.. What about Postgres the list is not that impressive. There is an old saying If 'everybody' else is jumping off a cliff should you too? Years ago I played around with MySQL because that was what everybody was using. The problem was it did not do what I wanted and Postgres did. Be less concerned with marketing lists and more concerned with what the software can help you do. Draw up a list of things you need in a database and then use the previous answers to decide which database better serves your needs. Are their any major implementations that moved from Mysql to Postgres? Howmany out their have done this or will advice to do that? cheers, Rahul. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/postgre-vs-MySQL-tp15976517p16024988.html Sent from the PostgreSQL - general mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Adrian Klaver [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On 14/03/2008, rrahul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks to all you wonderful people out their. I don't know if its your love for Postgres or nepothism that makes it look far superior than mysql. But why does the client list dosen't tell that? I see Mysql bosting for Google,Yahoo, Alcatel.. What about Postgres the list is not that impressive. What can I say? 96% of personal computers run some form of windows. Does that mean it's a superior product to a PC running Linux, or a Mac w/ MacOS? I'd say no (actually more like NOOO!), because windows doesn't let me do 80% of the things that I do (need to do) with my PC. From the fact hat the user-base is so massive, can I deduce that windows is superior in terms of security or easy maintenance? My personal experience says No, no way. What then? Could it be marketing or the sad results of a avalanche effect? Geee, there's a thought. cheers, Rahul. Cheers, Andrej -- Please don't top post, and don't use HTML e-Mail :} Make your quotes concise. http://www.american.edu/econ/notes/htmlmail.htm -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Andrej Ricnik-Bay [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 14/03/2008, rrahul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I see Mysql bosting for Google,Yahoo, Alcatel.. What about Postgres the list is not that impressive. What then? Could it be marketing or the sad results of a avalanche effect? Geee, there's a thought. Marketing. Remember that MySQL AB have a strong financial incentive to make organized efforts to locate and publicize impressive-sounding users of MySQL. (I've heard rumors they even give licensing discounts to companies that will let their names be used like that.) There is no comparable effort happening on the Postgres side. There are plenty of impressive users of PG too, but they don't have to talk about it. regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
What then? Could it be marketing or the sad results of a avalanche effect? Geee, there's a thought. What a wide variety of topics. One big difference for me is that MySQL used to be open source, but it no longer is. It's an odd hybrid OSS that barely makes sense to me since they claim to be open source under the GPL, and while you can contribute code to them (I did so in their JDBC driver many years ago before switching to Postgresql), they then own the code (fine!), but if you want to use it in any system that's not itself open source, you have to pay to get a license. Pay for GPL software? But they proudly state they are part of LAMP, yet only the M charges to use their software. The real leaders in these open source camps are Linux and Apache, neither of which have such absurd pseudo-open licensing terms. David -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Andrej Ricnik-Bay wrote: On 14/03/2008, rrahul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks to all you wonderful people out their. I don't know if its your love for Postgres or nepothism that makes it look far superior than mysql. But why does the client list dosen't tell that? I see Mysql bosting for Google,Yahoo, Alcatel.. What about Postgres the list is not that impressive. What can I say? 96% of personal computers run some form of windows. Does that mean it's a superior product to a PC running Linux, or a Mac w/ MacOS? I'd say no (actually more like NOOO!), because windows doesn't let me do 80% of the things that I do (need to do) with my PC. From the fact hat the user-base is so massive, can I deduce that windows is superior in terms of security or easy maintenance? My personal experience says No, no way. Whoa! Sure glad I read this thread. I was about to buy a Bentley but now that I know that sales figures are the sole measure of quality I can see that the Kia is clearly a superior vehicle. But seriously, some of the most disappointing products and services I've had the misfortune to connect with were also the most popular choices. It's interesting to look at the past several years' Linux Journal Readers' Choice Awards (basically a popularity contest) where MySql consistently takes top place vs. the Editors' Choice Awards where the writers have to lay-out their evaluation/reasoning. For the editors, PostgreSQL is #1 year after year. Also, a simple used by is pretty meaningless as it can range from core component of large-scale mission-critical 24x7 infrastructure to used by secretary to manage holiday card list. If you are a marketroid attempting to assemble an impressive-looking client list, guess where the threshold will be. Cheers, Steve -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Thu, 13 Mar 2008, rrahul wrote: I see Mysql bosting for Google,Yahoo, Alcatel.. Sure they are. Do some reading on the Google installation. The blog list at http://www.mysql.com/customers/customer.php?id=75 works as well as any. The reality here is that Google was just about fed up with MySQL not working well enough for them circa 2000, and what they ended doing is a combination of customizing MySQL to add the features they needed along with doing a large-scale replication job. They don't need any instance to be reliable, they solve that problem with redundancy instead. Look at http://code.google.com/p/google-mysql-tools/wiki/Mysql4Patches They had to add multiple replication features and fix some tiny little bugs, you know things like Changed InnoDB to recover when InnoDB and MySQL data dictionaries are inconsistent.* Now, ask yourself this: do you have that level of resources? Are you going to write your own recovery tool when MySQL bungles a commit and the data dictionary is screwed up? If not, I wonder how much that Google has managed to hack MySQL into a usable state for them should matter to you. * Why does this data dictionary corruption happen in MySQL? Because the data dictionaries (which they just call metadata), the most important tables in the database, are still using a design that frankly is garbage. See http://forge.mysql.com/w/images/0/0a/Mdl.pdf for details, it starts with the cheery Designed in the pre-transactional era of MySQL, [metadata] has not had an overhaul or a clean up ever since then. -- * Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:08:27 -0400 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Andrej Ricnik-Bay [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 14/03/2008, rrahul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I see Mysql bosting for Google,Yahoo, Alcatel.. What about Postgres the list is not that impressive. What then? Could it be marketing or the sad results of a avalanche effect? Geee, there's a thought. Marketing. Remember that MySQL AB have a strong financial incentive to make organized efforts to locate and publicize impressive-sounding users of MySQL. (I've heard rumors they even give licensing discounts to companies that will let their names be used like that.) There is no comparable effort happening on the Postgres side. There are plenty of impressive users of PG too, but they don't have to talk about it. I still find impressing that Google uses MySQL... I can guess why, I'd enjoy to hear a more informed opinion. I'd say: 1) legacy 2) no particular interest in data integrity/coherence Something more here http://www.postgresql.org/about/casestudies/ and a bit updated would help too. -- Ivan Sergio Borgonovo http://www.webthatworks.it -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:08:27 -0400 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Marketing. Remember that MySQL AB have a strong financial incentive to make organized efforts to locate and publicize impressive-sounding users of MySQL. (I've heard rumors they even give licensing discounts to companies that will let their names be used like that.) That's fairly standard practice. We have actually had customers try and negotiate that with us. If you give us a discount you can use our name in xyz Of course, we don't :) but then again that's why you don't see our name attached to large rollouts (even though you can see large rollouts attached to us.) Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake - -- The PostgreSQL Company since 1997: http://www.commandprompt.com/ PostgreSQL Community Conference: http://www.postgresqlconference.org/ Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate PostgreSQL political pundit | Mocker of Dolphins -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFH2dVdATb/zqfZUUQRAjFWAJ9MJibdGfK+mV7ZcOnsi2BK5j5k2wCcCh7t zRi1usSR6m/zgLV2BEcUG7w= =7h9t -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (David Wall) writes: What then? Could it be marketing or the sad results of a avalanche effect? Geee, there's a thought. What a wide variety of topics. One big difference for me is that MySQL used to be open source, but it no longer is. It's an odd hybrid OSS that barely makes sense to me since they claim to be open source under the GPL, and while you can contribute code to them (I did so in their JDBC driver many years ago before switching to Postgresql), they then own the code (fine!), but if you want to use it in any system that's not itself open source, you have to pay to get a license. Pay for GPL software? But they proudly state they are part of LAMP, yet only the M charges to use their software. The real leaders in these open source camps are Linux and Apache, neither of which have such absurd pseudo-open licensing terms. Indeed. If Linux had had the same sorts of obligations as MySQL(tm), it would have wound up a mere curiosity, because there were plenty of other OS projects around of fairly comparable functionality (particularly if we step back to 1993!), and no one would have put up with such in that context. -- let name=cbbrowne and tld=linuxfinances.info in name ^ @ ^ tld;; http://linuxfinances.info/info/multiplexor.html :FATAL ERROR -- VECTOR OUT OF HILBERT SPACE -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On 14/03/2008, Steve Crawford [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What can I say? 96% of personal computers run some form of windows. Does that mean it's a superior product to a PC running Linux, or a Mac w/ MacOS? I'd say no (actually more like NOOO!), because windows doesn't let me do 80% of the things that I do (need to do) with my PC. From the fact hat the user-base is so massive, can I deduce that windows is superior in terms of security or easy maintenance? My personal experience says No, no way. Whoa! Sure glad I read this thread. I was about to buy a Bentley but now that I know that sales figures are the sole measure of quality I can see that the Kia is clearly a superior vehicle. Heh. :} A silly question in this context: If we know of a company that does use PostgreSQL but doesn't list it anywhere ... can we tahttp://www.securecomputing.com/techpubsRC.cfm?pid=85ke the liberty to publicise this somewhere anyway? E.g. the control center ( http://www.securecomputing.com/techpubsRC.cfm?pid=85 ) uses postgres, the only official attribution (I've seen the binaries in the file-system) is that their product uses port 5432 in the manual. Cheers, Andrej P.S.: This is all really starting to belong to advocacy :} -- Please don't top post, and don't use HTML e-Mail :} Make your quotes concise. http://www.american.edu/econ/notes/htmlmail.htm -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Fri, 14 Mar 2008, Andrej Ricnik-Bay wrote: A silly question in this context: If we know of a company that does use PostgreSQL but doesn't list it anywhere ... can we take the liberty to publicise this somewhere anyway? Bad idea. There are companies who consider being listed as a user of a product a sort of recommendation of that technology, and accordingly they will get really annoyed if you do that when they didn't give you permission. This has actually happened, where someone has asked to be removed from the list of those using PostgreSQL. While it's fun to run strings on random software to see who is using PostgreSQL inside, it's best not to publish the results unless you like to collect cease desist letters. -- * Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:05:10 -0400 (EDT) Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 14 Mar 2008, Andrej Ricnik-Bay wrote: A silly question in this context: If we know of a company that does use PostgreSQL but doesn't list it anywhere ... can we take the liberty to publicise this somewhere anyway? Bad idea. Very bad idea. There are companies who consider being listed as a user of a product a sort of recommendation of that technology, and accordingly they will get really annoyed if you do that when they didn't give you permission. This has actually happened, where someone has asked to be removed from the list of those using PostgreSQL. Yes it has. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake - -- The PostgreSQL Company since 1997: http://www.commandprompt.com/ PostgreSQL Community Conference: http://www.postgresqlconference.org/ Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate PostgreSQL political pundit | Mocker of Dolphins -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFH2fpEATb/zqfZUUQRAjktAJ9ApY2Mgtylm5Ud13wAIjoDhudfOACeNgQv cuEmfQ3IT3MtPoPcdazXwKw= =7NTF -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Scott Marlowe wrote: On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 7:33 PM, Justin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I view updates/patches of any kind like this, if ain't broke don't fix it. I normally only update computers with security patches only after i prove it don't destroy installs. But that's juast it. When a postgresql update comes out, it is precisely because the database IS broken. A bug that might eat your data or allow an attacker to get into your database are the kinds of fixes, and the only kind really, that go into production pgsql releases. I too wait a day or two to test it on a staging server, but I've never had a pgsql update blow back in my face, and I've done an awful lot of them. So you missed 8.1.7 then or weren't using those features at the very least? You also didn't have the stats collector issue with 8.2.3, 8.2.4 took quite some time to come out. And remember the policy violation when 8.0 came out, we replaced the buffer expiry algorithm with a patch release. PostgreSQL is not perfect, but as you can see by the problems with 8.1.7 the next update was released very very quickly. Sometimes I fear we pump up our status a little too far with the reliability and only perfectly patched releases. The real key is what's the response when things go wrong, because things will go wrong at some point. I think we need to be careful because it's a much bigger fall the higher the pedestal we put ourselves on. Regards Russell -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 12:02 AM, Russell Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Scott Marlowe wrote: On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 7:33 PM, Justin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I view updates/patches of any kind like this, if ain't broke don't fix it. I normally only update computers with security patches only after i prove it don't destroy installs. But that's juast it. When a postgresql update comes out, it is precisely because the database IS broken. A bug that might eat your data or allow an attacker to get into your database are the kinds of fixes, and the only kind really, that go into production pgsql releases. I too wait a day or two to test it on a staging server, but I've never had a pgsql update blow back in my face, and I've done an awful lot of them. So you missed 8.1.7 then or weren't using those features at the very least? You also didn't have the stats collector issue with 8.2.3, 8.2.4 took quite some time to come out. And remember the policy violation when 8.0 came out, we replaced the buffer expiry algorithm with a patch release. Yeah, we went from 8.0.x (whatever was current at the time) to 8.2.4. And I do test any update for a couple days before applying it. So when something goes wrong with a release like 8.1.7 was, I suppose, I get the next one and I'm good. I don't just throw updates at production. But I've never been bitten by an update that was more than a couple days old either. And I remember the change in 8.0 in the cache control, and it definitely caused me to be slow on updating at that time, to make sure it worked. It was very well advertised though, so I don't feel like a surprise was sprung upon me. PostgreSQL is not perfect, but as you can see by the problems with 8.1.7 the next update was released very very quickly. Sometimes I fear we pump up our status a little too far with the reliability and only perfectly patched releases. The real key is what's the response when things go wrong, because things will go wrong at some point. I think we need to be careful because it's a much bigger fall the higher the pedestal we put ourselves on. Agreed. I do think though that the pg developers have gotten much much better about such things as time has gone by. I don't get the feeling MySQL has. The difference is very much in how one handles one's mistakes, and in that arena, I feel like pgsql has fewer in production releases and they fix them much quicker, which is a combination I can live with. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Wed, 12 Mar 2008, Russell Smith wrote: Scott Marlowe wrote: I too wait a day or two to test it on a staging server, but I've never had a pgsql update blow back in my face, and I've done an awful lot of them. So you missed 8.1.7 then or weren't using those features at the very least? You also didn't have the stats collector issue with 8.2.3, 8.2.4 took quite some time to come out...PostgreSQL is not perfect, but as you can see by the problems with 8.1.7 the next update was released very very quickly. The stats collector one made my life miserable for quite some time. But that was all part of a major upgrade that happened to contain a performance regression. The problem had been there since 8.2.0, and major version releases always come with new bugs in the new features. I know I caught it in release validation and held off upgrades until it was dealt with. I think what Scott was suggesting is that it's generally safe to apply minor revision updates and expect that you'll have less bugs afterwards than you'd have if you didn't apply the update. 8.1.7 was out for only two days before the 8.1.8 fix came out; only the most aggressive upgrade plan would have been bit by that. If you look at the link I passed along before, you'll see the difference with MySQL is that they've been abusing their customers with minor point releases that try to add new features. Instead some of these introduce functional regressions, which often hang around for a whole long longer than two days after being noticed (this isn't even considering the delays before those fixes make their way back into the open source product, some only even go to paying customers). Sure, the PG stats bug was around for five months before correction, but it was just a performance issue that only showed up under limited circumstances and once it was reported it got squashed fairly quickly. -- * Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 06:47 -0700, rrahul wrote: Any major clients of the two. You can add you own points too. Perhaps someone can comment on current MySQL backups procedures. I believe that MySQL used to (still does?) require shutdown to be backed up. I don't know whether this was true for all engines or whether it might have been fixed. Having to shutdown a database to make a backup is a non-starter for anything that other than a toy (or read-only) databases. -Reece -- Reece Hart, http://harts.net/reece/, GPG:0x25EC91A0
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
You can make a backup in MySQL in several ways: 1) Using mysqldump; 2) Lock tables and copy their files one-by-one (MyISAM-only); 3) Shutdown server and copy all files (can be a slave in a replicated setup); 4) Using InnoDB hot backup (commercial tool); On 3/12/08, Reece Hart [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 06:47 -0700, rrahul wrote: Any major clients of the two. You can add you own points too. Perhaps someone can comment on current MySQL backups procedures. I believe that MySQL used to (still does?) require shutdown to be backed up. I don't know whether this was true for all engines or whether it might have been fixed. Having to shutdown a database to make a backup is a non-starter for anything that other than a toy (or read-only) databases. -Reece -- Reece Hart, http://harts.net/reece/, GPG:0x25EC91A0 -- Sincerely yours, Olexandr Melnyk http://omelnyk.net/
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Reece Hart wrote: On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 06:47 -0700, rrahul wrote: Any major clients of the two. You can add you own points too. Perhaps someone can comment on current MySQL backups procedures. I believe that MySQL used to (still does?) require shutdown to be backed up. I don't know whether this was true for all engines or whether it might have been fixed. Having to shutdown a database to make a backup is a non-starter for anything that other than a toy (or read-only) databases. -Reece For a database of InnoDB tables, people tend to replicate the database, and then backup the slave (unless the db is trivially small, in which case, mysqldump). For MyISAM, you can back it up hot, or do the same replication thing as with InnoDB tables. For larger and active MySQL installations, it's not uncommon to see a MySQL database replicate to 2 or more slaves, and: - use a slave to initialize any future additional slaves - use a slave for backups - promote a slave to master in case of master failure There's the hot backup tool you can buy for InnoDB, but I've yet to meet anyone who's actually used it. Paul -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:13:14 -0700 paul rivers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For a database of InnoDB tables, people tend to replicate the database, and then backup the slave (unless the db is trivially That recalled me the *unsupported* feeling I have that it is easier to setup a HA replication solution on MySQL. Pardon my ignorance of serious DBA jargon... I'm thinking to something suited for load balancing the read as highest priority in terms of performance *and* duplicate the write across different boxes without the application layer has to know about it as second priority in terms of performance... I just would like to be contradicted and pointed to some viable (easy?) setup for pgsql, so that I and other people will get rid of this preconception if any. -- Ivan Sergio Borgonovo http://www.webthatworks.it -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Take a look at pgpool . http://pgpool.projects.postgresql.org/ 2008/3/12, Ivan Sergio Borgonovo [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:13:14 -0700 paul rivers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For a database of InnoDB tables, people tend to replicate the database, and then backup the slave (unless the db is trivially That recalled me the *unsupported* feeling I have that it is easier to setup a HA replication solution on MySQL. Pardon my ignorance of serious DBA jargon... I'm thinking to something suited for load balancing the read as highest priority in terms of performance *and* duplicate the write across different boxes without the application layer has to know about it as second priority in terms of performance... I just would like to be contradicted and pointed to some viable (easy?) setup for pgsql, so that I and other people will get rid of this preconception if any. -- Ivan Sergio Borgonovo http://www.webthatworks.it -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo wrote: On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:13:14 -0700 paul rivers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For a database of InnoDB tables, people tend to replicate the database, and then backup the slave (unless the db is trivially That recalled me the *unsupported* feeling I have that it is easier to setup a HA replication solution on MySQL. Well, if you have a crappy system that cannot sustain concurrent load or even be backed up concurrently with regular operation, one solution is to write a kick-ass replication system. The other solution is to enhance the ability of the system to deal with concurrent operation. We keep hearing how great all those Web 2.0 sites are; Slashdot, Flickr, etc; and they all run on farms and farms of MySQL servers, because MySQL replication is so good. I wonder if replication is an actual _need_ or it's there just because the other aspects of the system are so crappy. -- Alvaro Herrerahttp://www.CommandPrompt.com/ PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:47:35 +0100 jose javier parra sanchez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Take a look at pgpool . http://pgpool.projects.postgresql.org/ I knew about it. Giving a look at http://pgpool.projects.postgresql.org/#restriction it doesn't seem something that can be completely hidden to the application layer. I know that most of the problems (not all) arise from the fact that pg has features that MySQL can just dream of... but it doesn't look as something that is really transparent to the application layer. Not that this should imply I consider easy to achieve such result... I know it is far from being easy, just that it doesn't look as what I was trying to describe. So let me rephrase, in order of importance: - something completely transparent at the application layer - something that won't die if one of your boxes die - something that will improve performances of reads - something that won't suffer too much for replicating writes At a first sight it looks as if pgpool can't boost stuff in pl* functions. -- Ivan Sergio Borgonovo http://www.webthatworks.it -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Alvaro Herrera [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ivan Sergio Borgonovo wrote: On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:13:14 -0700 paul rivers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For a database of InnoDB tables, people tend to replicate the database, and then backup the slave (unless the db is trivially That recalled me the *unsupported* feeling I have that it is easier to setup a HA replication solution on MySQL. Well, if you have a crappy system that cannot sustain concurrent load or even be backed up concurrently with regular operation, one solution is to write a kick-ass replication system. The other solution is to enhance the ability of the system to deal with concurrent operation. We keep hearing how great all those Web 2.0 sites are; Slashdot, Flickr, etc; and they all run on farms and farms of MySQL servers, because MySQL replication is so good. I wonder if replication is an actual _need_ or it's there just because the other aspects of the system are so crappy. Reminds me of the saying that for each problem, there is a simple, elegant solution that is completely wrong. It amazes me that slony, being basically a bolt on replication solution has given me much fewer problems than MySQL replication which is known for silent failures. Slony is by no means perfect, but it is quite impressive as both a replication tool and an upgrade tool. An awful lot of the sites running on MySQL are running on it primarily because it's what they started with, and now it's hard to switch because their code is chock full of mysqlisms like select field1, field2 from table group by field1 and so on that no other database is going to swallow without throwing an error. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 10:26:21 -0700 Scott Marlowe [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Alvaro Herrera [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ivan Sergio Borgonovo wrote: On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:13:14 -0700 paul rivers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For a database of InnoDB tables, people tend to replicate the database, and then backup the slave (unless the db is trivially That recalled me the *unsupported* feeling I have that it is easier to setup a HA replication solution on MySQL. Well, if you have a crappy system that cannot sustain concurrent load or even be backed up concurrently with regular operation, one solution is to write a kick-ass replication system. The other solution is to enhance the ability of the system to deal with concurrent operation. We keep hearing how great all those Web 2.0 sites are; Slashdot, Flickr, etc; and they all run on farms and farms of MySQL servers, because MySQL replication is so good. I wonder if replication is an actual _need_ or it's there just because the other aspects of the system are so crappy. Reminds me of the saying that for each problem, there is a simple, elegant solution that is completely wrong. It amazes me that slony, being basically a bolt on replication solution has given me much fewer problems than MySQL replication which is known for silent failures. Slony is by no means perfect, but it is quite impressive as both a replication tool and an upgrade tool. I heard about Slony as well (dho!)... I'm not complaining about anything... I do like PostgreSQL from a programmer point of view and it makes my life easier. I never pushed it to the limit I need replication, pooling etc... Just as there is a myth out there that mysql outperform pgsql... I'm here to testify there is another myth (?) that says that pg doesn't have an easy (erm kick-ass) replication system. I've no deep knowledge of Slashdot, Flickr or Google to say they don't high level of data integrity/coherence as the one pg offers and it is famous for... so I doubt they would hit the limitations of systems like Slony or pgpool etc... etc... and maybe they have no interest in the more advanced features and data integrity pg has to offer... An awful lot of the sites running on MySQL are running on it primarily because it's what they started with, and now it's hard to switch because their code is chock full of mysqlisms like select field1, field2 from table group by field1 and so on that no other database is going to swallow without throwing an error. For what is worth I mostly share your opinion... just Google makes me wonder... -- Ivan Sergio Borgonovo http://www.webthatworks.it -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
--- Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you look at the link I passed along before, you'll see the difference with MySQL is that they've been abusing their customers with minor point releases that try to add new features. Instead some of these introduce functional regressions, which often hang around for a whole long longer than two days after being noticed (this isn't even considering the delays before those fixes make their way back into the open source product, some only even go to paying customers). This is something I noticed too when looking at MySQL and postgres. The frequency of bug fixes and features, some coming over pretty quickly from the community release of MySQL scared me. ___ Rise to the challenge for Sport Relief with Yahoo! For Good http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/forgood/ -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Glyn Astill wrote: --- Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you look at the link I passed along before, you'll see the difference with MySQL is that they've been abusing their customers with minor point releases that try to add new features. Instead some of these introduce functional regressions, which often hang around for a whole long longer than two days after being noticed (this isn't even considering the delays before those fixes make their way back into the open source product, some only even go to paying customers). This is something I noticed too when looking at MySQL and postgres. The frequency of bug fixes and features, some coming over pretty quickly from the community release of MySQL scared me. MySQL has incentives to _not_ make their community release production-quality. -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://postgres.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:35:19 -0400 (EDT) Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is something I noticed too when looking at MySQL and postgres. The frequency of bug fixes and features, some coming over pretty quickly from the community release of MySQL scared me. MySQL has incentives to _not_ make their community release production-quality. This thread is making my talk at MySQLCon very interesting. Joshua D. Drake - -- The PostgreSQL Company since 1997: http://www.commandprompt.com/ PostgreSQL Community Conference: http://www.postgresqlconference.org/ Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate PostgreSQL political pundit | Mocker of Dolphins -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFH2CP+ATb/zqfZUUQRAg78AKCNPJsFvLY7I/zxIXVZ9ndFtf9aMACdF7J+ QJQWDqDMLoj4lTiUIyGx1Ps= =8Xe7 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
--- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Glyn Astill wrote: --- Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you look at the link I passed along before, you'll see the difference with MySQL is that they've been abusing their customers with minor point releases that try to add new features. Instead some of these introduce functional regressions, which often hang around for a whole long longer than two days after being noticed (this isn't even considering the delays before those fixes make their way back into the open source product, some only even go to paying customers). This is something I noticed too when looking at MySQL and postgres. The frequency of bug fixes and features, some coming over pretty quickly from the community release of MySQL scared me. MySQL has incentives to _not_ make their community release production-quality. I mean features being pulled into the enterprise release that haven't had much time to be tested even in the community release. ___ Rise to the challenge for Sport Relief with Yahoo! For Good http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/forgood/ -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
At 09:47 PM 3/11/2008, rrahul wrote: Hi, I am a database professional but have never used Postgre. My client was exploring the posiblity of using Postgre instead of Mysql and wnated to know the comments from the community. I waned you people you post your views on the following comparision points 1] Performance 2] Scalablity 3] community support 4] Speed 5] ease of use 6] robustness Any major clients of the two. You can add you own points too. The advantage of MySQL is it looks good on paper with all the ticks on the extensive feature list so it's easy to convince bosses to use it. But the problem with MySQL is you often can't use all the advertised features at the same time, some of them are mutually exclusive. For example, with MySQL if you want fast single user selects or insert speeds you use MyISAM tables, but if you start to need transactions or high concurrency writes you have to use InnoDB which is significantly slower. Want to have a consistent backup of your MySQL database? For MyISAM tables you have to lock all tables till the backup is done, and that can affect performance a lot. OK so you use InnoDB. But when the time comes to _restore_a multiGB innodb table, you might find innodb a bit too slow. Worse, apparently fun things happen if someone halts the restore process halfway ;). Guess what happens if you have a mix of table types. A solution of course is to have multiple database servers with a master server replicating to a slave server that's used for backups, and resort to backing up stuff in on-disk format - shutdown slave and copy the files. This makes restoring faster. But after all this, MySQL stops looking so easy right? In fact such a multi database set up just to do proper backups and restores resembles a bad implementation of Postgresql's MVCC :). Basically with Postgresql, there's a lot less of this If you want to use Cool Feature A, you can't have Wonderful Feature B thing. I did a simple mass insert test (followed by backup with pg_dump or mysqldump and restore ) and postgresql 8.1 is faster or as fast as MySQL 5.0.26 with MyISAM tables, and faster than MySQL with innodb tables- default packages from suse 10.2 with tuning done for MySQL (increase of buffers etc) but postgresql is as per suse 10.2 defaults. I use MySQL daily at my workplace, and it's not something I recommend you use if you had a choice. In the old days (before version 6.x) postgresql wasn't good, but postgresql is way ahead now. Lastly, the other problem with MySQL is its Innodb and BDB stuff are now owned by Oracle. While Oracle is not squeezing MySQL yet, who knows what will happen a few years later. Regards, Link. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Glyn Astill [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: --- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MySQL has incentives to _not_ make their community release production-quality. I mean features being pulled into the enterprise release that haven't had much time to be tested even in the community release. For the last year or so it's actually the other way around: they put things into the for-pay version that have *not* hit the community version yet. So you pay to be a beta tester ;-) regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Alvaro Herrera wrote: Ivan Sergio Borgonovo wrote: On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:13:14 -0700 paul rivers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For a database of InnoDB tables, people tend to replicate the database, and then backup the slave (unless the db is trivially That recalled me the *unsupported* feeling I have that it is easier to setup a HA replication solution on MySQL. Well, if you have a crappy system that cannot sustain concurrent load or even be backed up concurrently with regular operation, one solution is to write a kick-ass replication system. The other solution is to enhance the ability of the system to deal with concurrent operation. We keep hearing how great all those Web 2.0 sites are; Slashdot, Flickr, etc; and they all run on farms and farms of MySQL servers, because MySQL replication is so good. I wonder if replication is an actual _need_ or it's there just because the other aspects of the system are so crappy Kick-ass imho really means really simple to setup and included as part of the standard db. There are all kinds of corner cases that can bite you with MySQL replication. Offhand, I wager most of these (at least in InnoDB) result from the replication commit status of a transaction is in the binlogs, which is not the same as the InnoDB database commit status in the .ibd files. Writing out binlog entries happens at a higher level than the storage engine, and so it's not hard to imagine what can go wrong there. There are a few my.cnf settings that let you really roll the dice with data integrity based on this dichotomy, if you so choose. In those high volume shops, imho replication is a requirement, but in part to overcome technical limitations of MySQL. Or to phrase it from a MySQL point of view, to do it the MySQL way. If you have 50-ish minutes, this video by the YouTube people talks about their evolution with MySQL (among many other things) : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6304964351441328559 The summary from the video is: - Start with a MySQL instance using InnoDB - Go to 1-M replication, and use the replicants as read-only version. - Eventually the cost of replication outweighs the gains, so go to database sharding - Keep 1-M replication within a shard group to allow easy backups of a slave, some read-only use of the slaves, and a new master in case of master failure (i.e. high availability) Almost everyone finds MyISAM unworkable in large scale environments because of the repairs necessary post-crash. Big complaints about MySQL high-volume shops often, imho, come back to : - You can only have so many active threads in the InnoDB storage engine module at a time. See e.g.: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/innodb-parameters.html#option_mysqld_innodb_thread_concurrency - Auto_increment columns as pkeys in InnoDB tables are practically required, yet severely limited scalability due to how a transaction would lock the structure to get the next auto-increment (significantly improved in 5.1) - Shutting down a MySQL engine can take forever, due partly dirty page writes, partly due to insert buffer merging. See: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/innodb-insert-buffering.html There are other complaints you'd expect people to have, but don't seem to get talked about much, because people are so used to (from my point of view) working around them. For example, statistics on an InnoDB table are calculated when the table is first accessed, but not stored anywhere, so there are extra costs on database startup. The backup issue with InnoDB has already been covered. Tablespace management in InnoDB seems exceptionally primitive, and is helped somewhat by the tablespace-per-table option. There are many more, again imho. Paul -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Well, if you have a crappy system that cannot sustain concurrent load or even be backed up concurrently with regular operation, one solution is to write a kick-ass replication system. Still, it would be nice to have a kick-ass replication system for PG, too. We've been toying with WAL archiving and backup db recovery, which works pretty well it seems as it appears to support all of our tables (not just those with an explicit primary key) and does the DDL stuff for creating/altering/dropping tables, columns, etc. The downside is that the backup is not operational in order to run even run a SELECT against, and because it's asynchronous in nature, there's always a window of data loss for transactions written to the WAL that haven't been archived yet. David -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 1:02 PM, paul rivers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Auto_increment columns as pkeys in InnoDB tables are practically required, yet severely limited scalability due to how a transaction would lock the structure to get the next auto-increment (significantly improved in 5.1) Pretty sure they implemented the fix for that in an early 5.0 release. I remember chatting with Heikki Turri about it. There are other complaints you'd expect people to have, but don't seem to get talked about much, because people are so used to (from my point of view) working around them. For example, statistics on an InnoDB table are calculated when the table is first accessed, but not stored anywhere, so there are extra costs on database startup. The backup issue with InnoDB has already been covered. Tablespace management in InnoDB seems exceptionally primitive, and is helped somewhat by the tablespace-per-table option. There are many more, again imho. I remember seeing something about some problems that using the tablespace per table option on some mysql site... goes to look... paraphrased from the Mysql Performance Blod... Using the innodb_file_per_table=1 setting really tends to work against you, as you tend to get lots of bloated tables over time. If all your innodb tables are in the same file, then when one frees space, another can use it. with files per table, you can't recover space this way. My real complaint with InnoDB is it's a red headed step child. If mysql supported only innodb, it would be a very different database, and probably a bit simpler as well. no need to worry about how you state fk-pk relationships (currently column level references are silently dropped for innodb OR myisam). If there was a run time switch that said use only innodb and use syntax that's sane I'd probably be willing to test that out. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Scott Marlowe wrote: On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 1:02 PM, paul rivers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Auto_increment columns as pkeys in InnoDB tables are practically required, yet severely limited scalability due to how a transaction would lock the structure to get the next auto-increment (significantly improved in 5.1) Pretty sure they implemented the fix for that in an early 5.0 release. I remember chatting with Heikki Turri about it. Definitely not fixed until 5.1, in fact not until very recently (5.1.22) : http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=16979 Anyway, enough of that for me. It's a Postgres list, and my list of MySQL complaints is far longer than my enthusiasm for documenting them. Paul -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
rrahul wrote: Hi, I am a database professional but have never used Postgre. PostgreSQL, or Postgres rather than Postgre. My client was exploring the posiblity of using Postgre instead of Mysql and wnated to know the comments from the community. I waned you people you post your views on the following comparision points 1] Performance 2] Scalablity 3] community support 4] Speed 5] ease of use 6] robustness People here are bound to prefer PostgreSQL to MySQL, otherwise you'd find us on a MySQL list. What sort of database were you looking at? On what operating system? With what hardware? Any major clients of the two. You can add you own points too. You might want to look at the website http://www.postgresql.org/ particularly the featured users, more quotes links on the front page. If you click the About link on the front page almost all the links down the left-hand side would be relevant. Did none of this information meet your needs, or were you having trouble finding it? -- Richard Huxton Archonet Ltd -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 6:47 AM, rrahul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I am a database professional but have never used Postgre. My client was exploring the posiblity of using Postgre instead of Mysql and wnated to know the comments from the community. I waned you people you post your views on the following comparision points 1] Performance 2] Scalablity 3] community support 4] Speed 5] ease of use 6] robustness I've used both pgsql and mysql (we prefer postgres, pgsql, or PostgreSQL, but not postgre...) for quite some time. My experience has been that under real production type load that postgresql is the better database. http://tweakers.net/reviews/657/6 the guys at tweakers appear to agree. I like postgresql's community support, specifically the mailing lists. I've gotten answers directly from the guy who wrote the code when I've had problems in the past, and they're very willing to listen to users who have reasonable requests for improvements, and some not so reasonable but useful ones as well. I would say postgresql is significantly more robust than MySQL. The only time I've ever lost data in a pgsql database has been when the OS stomped on it (think cheap crappy RAID controllers). PostgreSQL is designed for 24/7 operation and quite good at it. For some issues in both mysql and pgsql, take a look at these two links: http://sql-info.de/mysql/gotchas.html http://sql-info.de/postgresql/postgres-gotchas.html Look at which gotchas have been addressed in later versions, and you can see a pattern. PostgreSQL gotchas that can affect data correctness have mostly been stamped out, but there are plenty of mysql ones that have been there since 3.23 and haven't gone away. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:pgsql-general- [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of rrahul Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 6:48 AM To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org Subject: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL Hi, I am a database professional but have never used Postgre. My client was exploring the posiblity of using Postgre instead of Mysql and wnated to know the comments from the community. I waned you people you post your views on the following comparision points 1] Performance 2] Scalablity 3] community support 4] Speed 5] ease of use 6] robustness Any major clients of the two. You can add you own points too. Consider the license differences for commercial use: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/interactive/LEGALNOTICE.html http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/ -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Tue, 11 Mar 2008, rrahul wrote: I waned you people you post your views on the following comparision points 1] Performance 2] Scalablity 4] Speed 6] robustness These are all covered in more detail that you probably want at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/techdocs.83 The quick summary is that MySQL is very fast when using its MyISAM engine, which is prone to many data integrity issues. If you switch to the more reliable InnoDB engine most of the performance advantage MySQL might have goes away. There are also a couple of areas where PostgreSQL is almost always faster: complex joins and scalability under a heavy transaction load are two examples. 3] community support It's not unheard of for someone who is really having a problem that looks like a database bug to get one of the core PostgreSQL contributors poking at their box to figure out what's going on. Meanwhile, MySQL can't even get enough resources together to get their new version out the door (V5.1 has been lingering around since November of 2005), so there's little developer capacity to spare to help users like the support you find on the mailing lists here. I think if you poke around a bit you'll discover the MySQL community has been rather unhappy with the number of bugs in MySQL 5.0 and 5.1. A good intro is http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2007/10/04/mysql-quality-of-old-and-new-features/ 5] ease of use MySQL has more applications aimed at making it easier to use the database floating around. If all you want to build is a simple system, it's probably got an edge there. Whether that's still true if you're building something complicated enough that you can take advantage of some of the more powerful PostgreSQL features MySQL doesn't have is certainly debatable. -- * Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 11:55 AM, Richard Huxton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: People here are bound to prefer PostgreSQL to MySQL, otherwise you'd find us on a MySQL list. What sort of database were you looking at? On what operating system? With what hardware? I semi regularly post on the MySQL General Discussion list, and not here (until now). The knowledge base is much deeper and there is much more traffic here. MySQL has a very low barrier to entry, and allows people to form very bad habits. Postgres has a superset of the MySQL features. I wish I worked in a Postgres environment. -- Rob Wultsch -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 12:32 PM, Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 3] community support It's not unheard of for someone who is really having a problem that looks like a database bug to get one of the core PostgreSQL contributors poking at their box to figure out what's going on. Meanwhile, MySQL can't even get enough resources together to get their new version out the door (V5.1 has been lingering around since November of 2005), so there's little developer capacity to spare to help users like the support you find on the mailing lists here. I think if you poke around a bit you'll discover the MySQL community has been rather unhappy with the number of bugs in MySQL 5.0 and 5.1. A good intro is http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2007/10/04/mysql-quality-of-old-and-new-features/ An interesting point here is that because of the long delay in 5.1 some things have been attempted in 5.0 as performance enhancements that broke things. See specifically the bug whereby with innodb an order by DESC was actually turned into an order by ASC silently. It was in the production version of 5.0 for several months if I recall correctly. That kind of change does NOT get into production versions of postgresql. With a yearly release schedule, postgresql doesn't have to put dodgy performance updates in a production release. When something like that does happen, i.e. a bug or security fix goes wrong, the immediate response I've seen from the pgsql hackers has been amazingly fast. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Tue, 11 Mar 2008, Scott Marlowe wrote: That kind of change does NOT get into production versions of postgresql. With a yearly release schedule, postgresql doesn't have to put dodgy performance updates in a production release. This is worth expanding on: PostgreSQL doesn't put *any* feature changes in a production release. Once it's a stable release, only bug fixes are applied. Any other way is madness. -- * Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 4:22 PM, Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 11 Mar 2008, Scott Marlowe wrote: That kind of change does NOT get into production versions of postgresql. With a yearly release schedule, postgresql doesn't have to put dodgy performance updates in a production release. This is worth expanding on: PostgreSQL doesn't put *any* feature changes in a production release. Once it's a stable release, only bug fixes are applied. Any other way is madness. I'm really hoping Sun will put a stop to such behavior, but wonder if they'll do anything at all. Sadly, the worst problem with the behavior re mysql releases is that it trains DBAs to NOT install updates. In fairness, I know quite a few Oracle DBAs who won't install patches right away either. Then they come to postgresql and run a release missing a year or more of updates. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 3:31 PM, Dann Corbit [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:pgsql-general- [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of rrahul Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 6:48 AM To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org Subject: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL Hi, I am a database professional but have never used Postgre. My client was exploring the posiblity of using Postgre instead of Mysql and wnated to know the comments from the community. I waned you people you post your views on the following comparision points 1] Performance If you use InnoDB tables, and you should, then MySQL is actually slower than PostgreSQL in most cases, and it gets worse the more load you have and the more complex your DB is. 2] Scalablity I've run databases with millions of rows with no problem on a multiway system with 24 disks, and the performance was stellar. 3] community support I have never found a mailing so willing and able to help than the PostgreSQL mailing list. The folks here are the experts, and they never turn a problem away that I have seen. They are insightful and highly helpful. I only wish other products especially commercial ones could rival this level of committment by the developers, give this sort of support. 4] Speed Like I said, as long as you don't try something stupid, PostgreSQL has been very quick on all the projects I've used. Unless you make an index that wont fit in RAM, and any database will dog on that. (you might get a shock with count(*) but that's because postgresql cares about getting the answer right, not guessing). 5] ease of use They have excellent drivers for Python, Perl, Java, C, stored procedures can be written in just about any popular language, and the help screens in the command line app are very good. 6] robustness In ten years of using PostgreSQL I've never seen it crash, Our entire enterprise ran off PostgreSQL at our last company, and it was rock solid, never skipping a beat. Any major clients of the two. You can add you own points too. Consider the license differences for commercial use: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/interactive/LEGALNOTICE.html http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/ Like he said, PostgreSQL is really the only good choice for an open source database that free. I don't understand why people use MySQL at all to be honest. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Scott Marlowe [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm really hoping Sun will put a stop to such behavior, but wonder if they'll do anything at all. Sadly, the worst problem with the behavior re mysql releases is that it trains DBAs to NOT install updates. In fairness, I know quite a few Oracle DBAs who won't install patches right away either. It's worse than that: it also trains repackagers to not be too quick on the draw to adopt a mysql update release. I can tell you that new mysql updates don't get into Fedora, let alone RHEL, till they've been around at least a month or two. That's not laziness on my part; that's the burnt child shunning the fire. regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
Tom Lane wrote: Scott Marlowe [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm really hoping Sun will put a stop to such behavior, but wonder if they'll do anything at all. Sadly, the worst problem with the behavior re mysql releases is that it trains DBAs to NOT install updates. In fairness, I know quite a few Oracle DBAs who won't install patches right away either. It's worse than that: it also trains repackagers to not be too quick on the draw to adopt a mysql update release. I can tell you that new mysql updates don't get into Fedora, let alone RHEL, till they've been around at least a month or two. That's not laziness on my part; that's the burnt child shunning the fire. regards, tom lane I view updates/patches of any kind like this, if ain't broke don't fix it. I normally only update computers with security patches only after i prove it don't destroy installs. The email server we use, uses MySQL as the backend for calendars, tasks, and contacts, i've never been happy with its performance or the reliability. Seen mysql trash the database 3 times on dirty writes. Talk about annoyed users when their task and calendar entries disappear. Reading through the specs and what little i have played/experience with MySQL I avoid it because data is not guaranteed to be consistent even running InnoDB.I don't ever want to tell the data entry girls that yesterdays work needs to be duplicated because the database took a dump. performance is nice to have but no where near as important as making sure the data is safe and clean.
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Tue, 11 Mar 2008, Tom Lane wrote: I can tell you that new mysql updates don't get into Fedora, let alone RHEL, till they've been around at least a month or two. That's not laziness on my part; that's the burnt child shunning the fire. That would make a great marketing quote: Update to the latest MySQL and relive the exciting experience of when you first touched a hot stove. Wait, Dave asked me not to make comments like that anymore; sorry. -- * Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 7:33 PM, Justin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I view updates/patches of any kind like this, if ain't broke don't fix it. I normally only update computers with security patches only after i prove it don't destroy installs. But that's juast it. When a postgresql update comes out, it is precisely because the database IS broken. A bug that might eat your data or allow an attacker to get into your database are the kinds of fixes, and the only kind really, that go into production pgsql releases. I too wait a day or two to test it on a staging server, but I've never had a pgsql update blow back in my face, and I've done an awful lot of them. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
Re: [GENERAL] postgre vs MySQL
i've had to many sleepless nights rolling back patches on other software to just roll out patches. I'm a wait and see guy on most things. If its security update and the server is exposed to the internet i dig into that right away. Now if patch fixes a problem about data integrity i also dig into the detail to see if it affects my install if not i'll skip it. this is just my personal experience with patches for other software. Scott Marlowe wrote: On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 7:33 PM, Justin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I view updates/patches of any kind like this, if ain't broke don't fix it. I normally only update computers with security patches only after i prove it don't destroy installs. But that's juast it. When a postgresql update comes out, it is precisely because the database IS broken. A bug that might eat your data or allow an attacker to get into your database are the kinds of fixes, and the only kind really, that go into production pgsql releases. I too wait a day or two to test it on a staging server, but I've never had a pgsql update blow back in my face, and I've done an awful lot of them.
