Re: Postgres v MySQL 5.0

On Saturday 28 October 2006 06:34, Lukas Kahwe Smith wrote:
> John Wang wrote:
> > Also my statement "It seems like all Alexa 100 sites that use a OSS
> > database use MySQL" isn't wrong b/c Sourceforge isn't mentioned on those
> > two Pg site pages and the others are closet users. Now I can say it
> > seems like only 1 Alexa 100 site uses OSS if I can find some
> > confirmation from them. If Sourceforge really is using Pg in a big way,
> > it would be great if we can get the Sourceforge folks to give a
> > presentation on their Pg deployment and scaling at some conference. I'd
> > be for supporting that.
>
> The problem with many of the successful Web 2.0 companies is that they
> lack a dedicated DBA at the very start. Actually I just claim this, I do
> not have hard facts to back up that claim, but it sounded like that from
> stuff I have read about the early days of many of these projects.

Tim O'Reilly did a series in his blog on some web 2.0 companies, and not only
do many of them not have a dba, many of them bypass the database entirely.

> If you
> do not have a dedicated DBA you are much better off with MySQL in most
> cases, because its simple .. there are few choices to make and you get
> decent performance. Developers also often do not see the point in
> letting the database manage the data integrity.
>

My experience is that application programmers like to solve problems in
application space... even when they shouldn't have to.

> Now on projects where they do have a dedicated DBA, who does think that
> data integrity is the job of the database, that does have the expertise
> to figure out what replication method best fits the needs of the project
> etc. there PostgreSQL makes absolute sense.
>

yep

> The problem is that MySQL has gotten to many case studies with press
> coverage, that people start to think that MySQL is the better database
> product regardless if you have a DBA or not. And this is something that
> can only be countered with similar press coverage. Like every web
> developer needs to know that SourceForge runs on PostgreSQL eventhough
> they could be running on DB2 if they wanted to.
>

We do have permission to add them to the users page, so I'll go ahead and
update that (must have slipped my mind), but my understanding is that
sourceforge is not interested in being vocal about thier postgresql usage.

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