Re: More grist for the PostgreSQL vs MySQL mill

On 1/20/07, John Meyer <john(dot)l(dot)meyer(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
> What I think bothers me is this whole concept that if PostgreSQL is to
> flourish, MySQL has to be beaten down. Folks, both products are free,
> both can be used in the same shop (maybe not on the same computer if
> your running them in production). Putting down MySQL will not make
> PostgreSQL any better, or vice versa.
>

One thing to point out here is that MySQL's business strategy seems to be
changing, and I believe the "community edition" is starting to fall apart
(or struggling to gain momentum). It seems MySQL just dropped the ball on
the free version of their product, and it is taking time for people to run
with it. Their attention is fully on the "enterprise edition" packages.
Take a look at the 5.0 GA releases, you can't even download binary releases
of 5.0.33. You have to build from source, it kind of indicates the lack of
effort that MySQL is putting forward to the community, and sending a signal
"buy our enterprise edition".

Additionally, they feel that Oracle is such a threat that they have dumped
BDB (I believe this move was after Oracle acquired Sleepycat) and now they
announced they are dumping InnoDB (again after Oracle acquired it). Now
they are off building their own engine to compete against InnoDB.

I know right now they are promoting SolidDB, but that won't last long
("Falcon" is their new storage engine). And frankly, SolidDB+MySQL just
doesn't work right. I gave it a shot and there was tons of problems, hardly
production worthy. There also seems to be an increase of chatter about
people coming to PostgreSQL because of the actions that MySQL has taken.

Just my 2 cents.

--
Chad
http://www.postgresqlforums.com/