Re: [HACKERS] Enticing interns to PostgreSQL

On Saturday 23 July 2005 12:43, Jim C. Nasby wrote:
> I think we need to do 2 things to ensure PostgreSQL doesn't get
> relegated to niche status.

as a side question, do you feel BSD is a niche operating system?

> First, we need to counter MySQL's FUD. MySQL
> has a laundry-list of 'companies that are using mysql', even though it
> doesn't mean anything more than they've got it sitting on a server
> somewhere. Of course there's also they're misrepresentive benchmarks.
>

pgsql inc has something like this, a registered users site (or at least they
used to). I have on my todo to convert that into something for the main www
site, but it's gonna be awhile before I get to it. Of course if anyone is
interested in picking it up, shoot me an email.

(BTW, calling the my$ql customer list FUD is rather harsh, afaik all of the
companies listed there are customers of my$ql, and the oss projects do
support my$ql.)

> Second (and probably more important), we need to make it easier for
> people to migrate to PostgreSQL from MySQL. There's a sizeable number of
> people who would like to migrate things off of MySQL if it wasn't so
> difficult, and hard to do incrementally. Adding support for some MySQL
> features (such as enum and tinyint), making it easy for PostgreSQL
> databases to talk to MySQL databases (perhaps via dblink), and providing
> methods to connect to PostgreSQL without having to tear out big chunks
> of un-abstracted code are some things that would help here.

I always get concerned when things devolve into a pg vs my$ql scenario. What
I think we need to do is make it easier for people to convert from $ql $erver
and oracle to postgresql. They have larger user bases and have folks willing
to pay for development/support. If we can make it simple enough that 50% of
the people using my$ql all switch to postgres, but my$ql goes after the
corporations and gets 50% of them to switch to my$ql, were not going to come
out on top.

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