Re: O'Reilly Open Source Convention Report

On Sunday 04 August 2002 10:13 pm, Rob Brown-Bayliss wrote:
> On Mon, 2002-08-05 at 14:17, Tom Lane wrote:
> > We did well I thought, though it still seemed that MySQL had a larger
> > presence at the conference than PG. Maybe next year ;-)
>
> Without flames whats the story there? For example I read an interviwew
> this week (on the web, cant recall where) where an guy from SUN briefly
> mentioned putting MySQL up Oracle, in the context of providing a
> complete package...
>
> Wouldn't PostgreSQL be a better contender due to the more advanced
> features (assuming Mysql has not caught up)
>
> My basic understanding was MySQL was being pushed for speed rather than
> features, whilst PostgreSQL was more feature rich and robust...
>
> Any calm and reasond answeres?

If you happen to have the article handy, I would be interested to read it.

MySQL has a much larger user base. More companies use it, and sometimes for
important stuff. If Sun is talking about a wide-scale deployment, it makes
sense (from a conservative's perspective) to go with what everyone else is
using. More people will already know how to use mysql, and that means lower
training cost. I also read something about a newer version of mysql
supporting replication... although I don't remember the details (you might
want to check my facts before doing something important :) ).

And although I like postgres much more, I don't think anyone will claim that
MySQL is useless. MySQL, at minimum, can store data, and spit it back, and do
it for no license fee. Just like postgres :)

That perhaps explains Sun's involvement with mysql.

On a related note, I think the developers are really headed in the direction
of more widespread use (I say this without meaning that it will take away
from MySQL's user base, although that could be the case). I also know that
they're making real progress, based on the number of people I've talked to
that are taking more of an interest (well, at least experimenting with it).

Regards,
Jeff Davis