-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Wednesday 05 March 2003 12:41 am, Shawn wrote: > For database, I think I'd prefer Postgres - everything I've heard about > MySql makes me think it's to databases what MS Access is. Whereas Postgres > seems to be more on par with Oracle/MS SQL Server. > It's really unfortunate that people have this impression. I'm not faulting you personally for this, Shawn. My co-worker once called MySQL a "baby database". I wanted to smack him. ;-)
MySQL seems to have taken a bit of a hit over the last few years for missing some "enterprise" features like foreign key relationships and transactions (both of which they fixed, but people don't seem to read docs, so they don't know this). In fact, if we go read http://www.mysql.com/products/mysql/index.html, we find this: "MySQL Standard includes the standard MySQL storage engines and the InnoDB storage engine. InnoDB is a transaction-safe, ACID-compliant storage engine with commit, rollback, crash recovery and row-level locking capabilities. This version is for users who want the high-performance MySQL database with full transaction support. MySQL Standard is licensed under the GPL. MySQL Pro is the commercially-licensed version of the server with the same feature-set." The foreign key thing they used to explain way as being something most people don't need and even fewer truly understand, which I don't entirely disagree with. :-) But they do seem to have support for that now too. Check out this: http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/ANSI_diff_Foreign_Keys.html Alas, most Linux distros are still shipping the 3.x line (though I think Mandrake 9.1 is going to ship with 4.0.11, if the FTP servers aren't lying to me). So if you want all this goodness, you might have to step outside what your distro supplies for you and install a newer version yourself. Personally what I really hate about the comparison of MySQL to Access is that I've seen several idiots "draw" themselves a database in Access using the pretty GUI tools, without having any concept of how it really works. MySQL at least makes you work for it, so you can be more sure that a MySQL database will work. :-) Plus, Access does not scale nearly as well as MySQL does (in my personal experience - no charts or graphs to back this up, just gut feel). Have I said anything about Postgres vs MySQL? No, because I don't have any experience with Postgres, so I can't tell you. I'm just going off about the MySQL vs Access comparison. :-) My thoughts, not yours, as Joe would say. Ian -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+ZjFKSiY+RXI7JS4RAnPzAJ4ql6ltJkuJALK00NfYSco3npB16wCg5jiE iRJS3w3LOxOM4hYhscUU9hk= =0krn -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
