Re: Which CMS/Ecommerce/Shopping cart ?

On Jul 29, 2010, at 10:53 AM, Samantha Atkins wrote:

> This touches on a question I would love to be able to answer
>
> Why is MySQL so much more popular right now, especially in the OpenSource community? As a database I find its architecture with multiple underlying engines and other quirks to be rather dubious. Then there is the issue of commercial licenses and exactly when you must have those and what it will really cost. Yet it is pretty ubiquitous. How come? Why isn't postgresql more on developer's minds when they think of OS databases? Amazon cloud has great scalable MySQL support but apparently not postgreql. Why? Is there something about postgresql that is bugging all these people or what?

MySQL is "the PHP database".

Low rent shared hosting targets primarily people hosting PHP apps. Most PHP apps target MySQL. So hosting companies offer PHP and MySQL.

Most PHP apps are aimed to run on low end shared hosting, where the only database available is likely to be MySQL, so PHP apps target MySQL.

Another issue is that it's apparently easier to deploy multi-tenant MySQL than PostgreSQL.

And yet another is the... lets just say "sloppy development style" of most PHP coders who've learned to use MySQL, rather than SQL. That maps better onto the sloppy MySQL approach to data integrity than the PostgreSQL one. "0000-00-00" isn't a date and "" isn't an integer - unless you're a PHP coder using MySQL. These bugs in the apps, and similar ones related to MySQL's rather special approach to SQL, also make it painful to add PostgreSQL support to an existing app that was developed solely to target MySQL.

Cheers,
Steve