Re: MySQL versus Postgres

On 7 Aug 2010, at 5:19, Sandeep Srinivasa wrote:

> +1 on this.
> This is very interesting from the point-of-view of transitioning MySQL webapps to Postgres. The truth is that for a lot of people, MySQL is their first DB (because of loads of pre-existing software. Refer to my thread "Which CMS/Ecommerce/shopping cart"). When we are ready to move to PG, we are already used to the MySQL way of doing things.

Oh gosh, you make me remember my first MySQL experience! I had just started a small company that was starting their main project on a MySQL/PHP environment on Windows. We ran into some trouble with Windows IIRC and the sysadmin was happier running stuff on Linux too, so we switched our early code and database over to Linux. Turns out that in MySQL, going from a case-insensitive file-system to a case-sensitive one means that all your table names are now case-sensitive as well!

That, and the struggle getting MySQL to actually use InnoDB and relational integrity on tables instead of just claiming that it did, made it a really easy case for me to convince my colleagues and boss to switch to Postgres. They haven't looked back since.

That was back in the days of MySQL 4, but the scars it left are still there. That company has gone bankrupt in the meantime (core developers moved away), but I run into some of my old colleagues every now and then and they're almost all still doing their stuff on Postgres - or at least not on MySQL. One exception is the guy who has to use one of their real-time engines for telecommunication, where data-integrity apparently isn't considered critical.

Alban Hertroys

--
If you can't see the forest for the trees,
cut the trees and you'll see there is no forest.

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