Re: need for concrete info

on 10/11/03 6:48 PM, gearond(at)fireserve(dot)net purportedly said:

> Well, now I am writing a proposal, which among many other points,
> proposes to switch from the current hosting site of a non profit to a
> slightly more expensive one running PostgreSQL, (where I have some other
> projects.) I want to use as my main argument, the fact (at this time,
> only from my previous usage), that MySQL really doesn't have foreign
> keys or record locking, and Postgres does.
>
> I will be trusted to say this, and I don't have to reprint the manuals
> from each DB in my proposal, or maybe I will. But anyway, I'm still
> correct with today's MySQL vs. PostgreSQL, right? I *really* want to use
> PostgreSQL for this project and not MySQL as I want to avoid growing
> pains trying to get MySQL to do the job of a bigger DB down the road.

MySQL is closing the gap, so many of its drawbacks are no longer the case,
and you have to look a little harder for its weaknesses, but they are there.
Fortunately, MySQL spells many of them out for you:
http://www.mysql.com/documentation/mysql/bychapter/manual_Introduction.html#
Roadmap

You will see that MySQL has planned to implement features that Postgres has
had for a long time (in development terms). In Postgres, they are tried and
true. In MySQL, it will take a while, and do you want your application to
help them beta test? You may also want to consider that their implementation
schedule may not correspond with yours.

Even if one could argue that the missing features are unnecessary for your
application, there is one huge problem (in my mind) that MySQL continues to
have, namely it does not honor NOT NULL constraints. Granted, you can
enforce this by recompiling with a specific option, but if you currently do
not have any control over the compilation or configuration of MySQL you are
stuck. Even if you can get this option, there are issues with multiple
inserts arising out of a single statement, but that would imply that their
transaction handling mechanism is not robust or it wouldn't be an issue.

I would add that I am not a MySQL basher--I have used MySQL in amhy
instances and it performs perfectly well in those cases. I simply believe
(with justification) that Postgres is a better product, especially for
larger and more complicated applications.

Best,

Keary Suska
Esoteritech, Inc.
"Leveraging Open Source for a better Internet"