Re: postgre vs MySQL

Reece Hart wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 06:47 -0700, rrahul wrote:
>> Any major clients of the two.
>> You can add you own points too.
>
> Perhaps someone can comment on current MySQL backups procedures. I
> believe that MySQL used to (still does?) require shutdown to be backed
> up. I don't know whether this was true for all engines or whether it
> might have been fixed. Having to shutdown a database to make a backup
> is a non-starter for anything that other than a toy (or read-only)
> databases.
>
> -Reece

For a database of InnoDB tables, people tend to replicate the database,
and then backup the slave (unless the db is trivially small, in which
case, mysqldump). For MyISAM, you can back it up hot, or do the same
replication thing as with InnoDB tables.

For larger and active MySQL installations, it's not uncommon to see a
MySQL database replicate to 2 or more slaves, and:

- use a slave to initialize any future additional slaves
- use a slave for backups
- promote a slave to master in case of master failure

There's the hot backup tool you can buy for InnoDB, but I've yet to meet
anyone who's actually used it.

Paul