On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 9:36 PM, Alyssa and Chris Gordon & Family <[email protected]> wrote: > So I'm working a project that involves a database and I'm wondering which is > more standard, MySQL or PostgresQL. Coming
My impression is that more application instances use MySQL and that PostgreSQL's dialect is closer to the ISO standards. > Oracle. At work I've used Oracle frequently, and MySQL and Oracle have very > similar syntax. Switching to PostgresQL is definitely a possibility as its > just a little bit different syntax, but still basically the same underneath. I'm surprised that you find MySQL and Oracle more similar than Oracle and PostgreSQL; my experience has been the opposite. But that's just my experience, and anyway I haven't actively used MySQL very much for a few years now. The procedural language PL/pgSQL is pretty close to Oracle's PL/SQL. A more fundamental similarity is that PostgreSQL uses a multi-version concurrency model, just like Oracle. It seems to me that PostgreSQL's development team has been more concerned with elegance and more careful with correctness, while MySQL's development team is happy to ship something that works well enough for many people and that can be improved later. ACID is a relatively new feature for MySQL. > more common database system. Any pros/cons/general feedback is appreciated. In recent projects, I've used SQLite for the few unit tests that cover persistence concerns, PostgreSQL for development instances and the most frequently-run suite of integration tests, and MSSQL for qc and production use. The database driver is selected dynamically, and the compatible subset of SQL is adequate for almost everything I need to do. I wouldn't say that any particular RDBMS is best for open source. Clearly it's nice to have a completely free software stack, but aside from that your choice should depend on your project's requirements. Personally, when it doesn't matter which database I'm using (which is most of the time), I choose PostgreSQL because I'm sort of a "better is better" sympathizer. Sean ----------------------------------------------------------------- To get off this list, send email to [email protected] with Subject: unsubscribe -----------------------------------------------------------------
