On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 2:30 AM, Calle Dybedahl <[email protected]> wrote:

> While I agree with everything you say here, I'd like to add that in my
> experience Oracle at least does what you want it to. Yes, it's hideously
> expensive, but at least it works.
>

See, that's the funny part -- what I wanted it to do was *work*, and it was
failing at that (crashing the entire server instance on a "SELECT * FROM
foo" query).  After fighting support for two weeks they finally acknowledged
the glaring bug and promised a fix in a maintenance release -- six months
away.  This is what our $20K+ a year bought.

Contrast with PostgreSQL, where I found a similar instance-crashing bug, and
within 3 hours had an email from Tom Lane with a source patch attached.  The
PostgreSQL community is infinitely superior to what Oracle believes passes
for production support.

----------

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 9:15 AM, Robert Kinyon <[email protected]> wrote:

> Oracle is a space shuttle
>

That's a great analogy.  Oracle is 70's technology that desperately needs to
be retired, and occasionally has a catastrophic failure mode.  If I was
required to pay money, I would choose DB2 or SQL Server long before I would
choose Oracle.

Actually, no -- if I was required to pay money, I'd talk to EnterpriseDB
about Postgres Plus.

----------

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Matija Grabnar <[email protected]>wrote:

> Yes, you can put an empty string into a NOT NULL text column. You can also
> put a zero
> into a NOT NULL int column. Both are legitimate values for the type. And
> no, mysql will NOT
> accept a NULL value in a NOT NULL text column.
>
> mysql> create table foo (a text not null);
> Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.05 sec)
> mysql> insert into foo values (NULL);
> ERROR 1048 (23000): Column 'a' cannot be null
> mysql> insert into foo values ('');
> Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
>

I think his point is that this silently works and definitely should not
(should be treated the same as null):

insert into foo values ();

But MySQL does what it does, and those shortcomings may not be necessary
considerations for some projects -- not everything requires strict ACID
compliance, sometimes you really do just want grep with a SQL wrapper.  As
always, look around and choose the right tool for the job.

But be advised, the right tool is almost always going to end up being
PostgreSQL.

-- 
Stephen Clouse <[email protected]>
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