Re: [HACKERS] Enticing interns to PostgreSQL

On Sat, Jul 23, 2005 at 02:27:51PM -0400, Robert Treat wrote:
> 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?

All things considered, yes. This is especially true outside of ISP's.
But, there's something even more important than userbase, and that's
development effort. I think it's pretty easy to see that linux is
clearly ahead of *BSD there.

> > 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.

Maybe put the code in pg-foundry so it's easy for people to help?

> (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.)

I didn't mean that the customer list was FUD (even though it came across
that way). What is FUD is a lot of their benchmarks, etc. that show them
to be superior to other databases. There is also a lot of FUD around
MySQL in the OSS community. I've actually seen websites *apologize* for
using PostgreSQL (since they needed minor features like subqueries and
views).

> > 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.

I absolutely agree that we should be assisting in the migration from
Oracle and MSSQL, but there's already a good amount of focus on that (as
well there should be).

But I think it's also folly not to promote MySQL->PostgreSQL migration.
The only advantage MySQL has over PostgreSQL is the size of the user
community. More users means more tools means more apps written for MySQL
means more users, etc. Many times people start off on MySQL then find
themselves wishing they hadn't once they get some exposure to
PostgreSQL. Yet they stay with MySQL because of how difficult it would
be to migrate. So they stay MySQL users, giving MySQL more momentum.

Fortunately, since MySQL is a fairly simple database, it wouldn't be
too difficult to offer features that would greatly ease migration. Even
some simple things like providing an equivalent to enum would probably
go a long way.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Database Consultant decibel(at)decibel(dot)org
Give your computer some brain candy! www.distributed.net Team #1828

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