Lennart Sorensen wrote:
I think some people don't like MySQL due to historical license reasons, lack of many features requires to be a proper SQL implementation, crappy locking granularity, etc. Sure it has improved over the years, but once people decide postgresql is a better choice, it is hard to convince them to try anything else unless there is something that offers them all the features they already have and something new in addition. MySQL has never gotten to the level of features of postgresql. I am certainly one of the people that will take postgresql over mysql anytime.
That's ok, everybody's free to choose of course. I just get irritated when people start wheeling out the same old tired canards every time anybody so much as mentions MySQL. It just gets old.
I did look at PostgreSQL a long time ago, can't remember when, but at the time the PostgreSQL zealots were all telling me that it was way better than MySQL. But then, digging more deeply, I discovered that PostgreSQL had something like an 8k row size limit, which seemed absurd to me. And no built-in fulltext indexing. And no replication. Also, it needed constant vaccuuming. And it turned out there were problems with table corruption. And then I found out that PostgreSQL was really incredibly slow. So at that point I started taking the people who pushed PostgreSQL as being God's Gift to DBA's with a hefty pinch of salt. Of course, those specific issues have long been addressed, but the point is, the fanboys were all telling me that PostgreSQL was way better than MySQL when it *definitely* had those limitations. So why should I believe them any more now?
There are issues with any software package, PostgreSQL included, however ACID it may be by design there are other problems which you only find out about when you actually put the thing into production. In every slashdot discussion about this subject, somewhere buried in there you'll find someone who says they tried to shift to PostgreSQL for production use and it was simply horrible, slow etc and they shifted back to something else. Usually they get shouted down.
I don't love MySQL, it's just a tool. I don't hate PostgreSQL, it's just a tool. They both have their own pluses and minuses. I just wish people would stop trying to pretend that PostgreSQL is the only "real" database option and MySQL is "just a toy". It's really irritating. I like to use what works, and MysQL *definitely* works. I don't like people being misleading, and that's what those early fanboys were being when they tried to get me to use PostgreSQL over MySQL. And I think they are still being misleading when they try to pretend that MySQL is somehow introducing "risk" into my system.
But here we go again, this is turning into yet another MySQL vs PostgreSQL discussion. I don't really want to talk about PostgreSQL here, I'm sure it's a Very Fine Database and all but it's irrelevant to this discussion. This was supposed to be a question about filesystems, not databases, so I guess I'll just leave this little tangent at that.
Thanks, /Neil