Re: Are we mischaracterising mysql? Re: 12 Silver Bullets

Ron,

Talk about spin... I just read the Sabre case study that you pointed
out. It is interesting how they portray it because I sat in a case
study at Gartner's Open Source Summit that was given by the guys at
Travelocity. What the case study DOESN'T tell you is that NONE of the
transactions run through MySQL.

The entire backend for actual transactions runs on Oracle. When you go
to Travelocity and do all your searches, that is pulling data from
MySQL. The MySQL data is updated from Oracle back end databases. When
you decide to purchase, the system then switches to Oracle where all the
real work happens. MySQL is used for read-only work at Sabre.

Derek M. Rodner
Director, Product Strategy
EnterpriseDB Corporation
732.331.1333 office
484.252.1943 cell
www.enterprisedb.com

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-advocacy-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org
[mailto:pgsql-advocacy-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org] On Behalf Of Ron Mayer
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 3:12 PM
To: Simon Riggs; pgsql-advocacy(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: [pgsql-advocacy] Are we mischaracterising mysql? Re: 12 Silver
Bullets

Simon Riggs wrote:
>
> - MySQL's feature set corresponds to ...:
> mostly read-only, simple SQL, design implemented by developers, so no
> DBA required.
>
> - PostgreSQL's feature set works for "difficult/complex" web apps.

Really. It looks to me like MySQL's niche that postgresql doesn't yet
touch is in the most complex, most insert/update intensive applications.

The two reference MySQL projects that first come to my mind are
the Sabre airline system[1]; and Google Adwords[2,3]. Both
extremely update intensive applications - far beyond what I see
PostgreSQL being used for.

In contrast - I see postgresql's successes mostly in simple (single
monolithic instances) and read-mostly applications (data mining
like Genentech's case study on the web site).

While I totally agree with Josh that Oracle's $7.2Billion database
revenue [4] is way more interesting than MySQL's $0.05Billion; it
seems a bit odd to see people suggesting that MySQL is for simpler and
read-mostly systems; when it seems the most complex and most update
intensive applications are the niche that it has that PostgreSQL
doesn't yet.

What am I missing?

[1]
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/downloads/Sabre-HP-MySQL-case-study
.pdf
[2] http://xooglers.blogspot.com/2005/12/lets-get-real-database.html
[3]
http://zurlocker.typepad.com/theopenforce/2005/12/googles_use_of_.html
[4] http://www.sqlmanager.net/en/news/sql/1189

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