Re: [HACKERS] Enticing interns to PostgreSQL

On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 21:19, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Folks,
>
> > > Sadly, I'd be willing to bet there's a lot of professors using MySQL to
> > > teach database theory. Just like there's a lot of other people who use
> > > it because they don't know any better. But everyone else uses it, so it
> > > must be good, right?
>
> In my experience, universities in the US tend to use one of 3 database systems
> to teach DB programming:
>
> 1) Oracle because the Uni has a campus-wide license and there's lots of good
> books on Oracle.
> 2) MS SQL Server because the Uni is an all-Microsoft shop
> 3) PostgreSQL because they can take it apart
>

I'd certainly agree on 1 & 2, though I haven't seen widespread examples
of 3. As Fabian Pascal likes to say, most universities are more
interested in teaching about products than teching fundamentals, so they
don't have much need for a database you can take apart.

> I can't say that I've encountered MySQL being used for University courses from
> anyone I've talked to at conventions.
>

You'd be surprised then. A co-worker recently went through some online
courses at the university of kansas. For his database classes they used
oracle/java, but for web development classes, they also used my$ql/php.
I imagine this scenario is pretty common, where you cant use my$ql for
any real db class because it just doesnt have the feature set, but in
web development classes where you dont care about your data store, and
want something simple for windows users to install on thier own
machines, my$ql would be an obvious choice.

Robert Treat
--
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL