Re: "Too far out of the mainstream"

On 05 2012 10:51:49 Ivan Sergio Borgonovo wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Sep 2012 19:14:28 -0700
> Chris Travers <chris(dot)travers(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
> > So people are using PostgreSQL in roles that aren't very visible
> > anyway, DBA's are usually coming to PostgreSQL from other RDBMS's,
> > and few applications are really distributed for PostgreSQL.
>
> I know a bunch of people working for huge sites that love Postgres but
> use MySQL. The main reason is they build what Postgres is famous for at
> a higher level and in a more specialized way with their own glue.
>

Postgresql has more meaning in the enterprise than in a web site.
Web Content is never critical. The world will keep turning even if some
CSS file or some article gets lost. They are meant to be transient any way.
They are not part of anything bigger.

Postgresql shines whenever data matters. I cannot imagine running our app
(single master, 80+ slaves in 80+ vessels in the 7 seas (80+ = 80 and growning)) in mysql.
We have not lost a single transaction. We have not had a single integrity issue.
All problems were due to our own fault and never postgresql's.
Runing a variaty of 7.4 / 8.3 mixture (unfortunately upgrading to 9+ is a very hard task to manage)
(now all are on 8.3) we never had any issues. And the servers run unattended,
in almost military (marine) conditions, with frequent blackouts, hardware failures due to vibration,
disk failures, mother board failures, CPU failures, memory failures.
Postgresql just delivered.

And the thing is that postgresql really has no rivals either. No competitor when it comes
to full-featured OSS RDBMS. There are OSS rdbms (mysql) and full featured rdbms (DB2/Oracle)
but none besides pgsql which combines both worlds.

Also, as far as extensibility is concerned, postgresql is clearly the king.

> It's easy to get visibility if you're on the internet and you're huge.
>
> But not everyone can "rebuild" eg. transactions at a higher level and
> need as much specialized solutions.
>
> On the other hand for historical reasons MySQL and PHP have nearly
> monopolized the hosting space and for many web sites it's hard to
> appreciate the difference between Postgres and MySQL (unless your DB
> crash and burn).
>
> That's what most people perceive as "the mainstream" if you don't have
> a big marketing dept lying.
>
>
-
Achilleas Mantzios
IT DEPT