Re: Triggers, Stored Procedures, PHP. was: Re: PostgreSQL Advocacy, Thoughts and Comments

I used it first because

1) someone suggested it and I didn't know any better
2) install, setup, maintanance and using it is easier than breathing. You'd
be surprised how much of a difference it makes to a newbie to not have to do
things like vacuum regularly and the ability to change a column type (I'm
not saying this is a good idea, just that it seemed nice at the time), stuff
like that.
3) their online documentation was great, learning how to do new stuff was
fast and easy
4) It SEEMED to work fine (I say seemed because I never had anything happen
to me like an int overflow problem)
5) For the type of work I started off with I didn't badly need the features
that mysql lacks

I'm betting that this is the case with many mysql users.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Lane" <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: <pgsql-general(at)postgreSQL(dot)org>
Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 10:01 AM
Subject: Re: Triggers, Stored Procedures, PHP. was: Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL
Advocacy, Thoughts and Comments

> "Rod K" <rod(at)23net(dot)net> writes:
> > Paul Thomas wrote:
> >> Much of the populatity of MySQL seems to stem from PHPs out-of-the-box
> >> support for it.
>
> > This is incorrect. The embedded mysql client library was not added
until
> > PHP4.0 RC1. PHP's popularity existed long before this. The real
culprit
> > causing the popularity of MySQL was it's ubiquity among hosting
providers
> > and the virtual non-existence of PG in that arena. If PG had been more
> > friendly to shared hosting environments, perhaps this situation wouldn't
> > have arisen.
>
> You are both engaging in the most blatant form of historical
> revisionism. Of course PHP's support for MySQL didn't drive MySQL
> adoption --- it was the other way around, PHP adapted to MySQL because
> that was what was out there. I think "friendly to shared hosting
> environments" is a made-up reason as well. The real reason PG lost
> mindshare to MySQL in the early web days is that at the time, PG was
> hard to install, somewhat buggy, and poorly documented. (Which was not
> surprising considering that none of these mattered much in its original
> academic environment.) MySQL didn't do much, maybe, but what it could
> do it did pretty well and without install/learning curve hassles. We
> had mostly caught up on those criteria by perhaps 7.1 or 7.2, but the
> mindshare gap remains.
>
> regards, tom lane
>
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