Re: [PHP3] Re: PostgreSQL vs Mysql comparison

On Sat, 2 Oct 1999, Patrick Greenwell wrote:

> On Sat, 2 Oct 1999, Scott Perkins wrote:
>
> > You make a good point about available admin and other facilities etc.
> >
> > I am interested in some of the forum functionalities that seem to be "off the
> > shelf" with Mysql but I have not done my homework yet with PostgreSQL. There
> > must me some good reasons why PostgreSQL beat out
> > Mysql for product of the year or best database or most popular among
> > NIX/NUX users or something recently.
>
> Because the Postgres mailing list was informed of the vote and apparently
> had more members that voted than the MySQL list did. To put awards based on web
> polls in perspective, "Hank, the angry drunken dwarf" won the "most
> beautiful person in show business" award on People Magazines website
> earlier this year. In other words, I wouldn't take the voting or the award
> for most popular database very seriously given the voting methodology...

Wait...we'er talking about two different things here...if you are
referring to the "LinuxWorld Editors Choice Award" that we recently
won...that had nothing (or, at least as far as any of us knew) to do with
any WWW based poll that we are aware of...

The only WWW based poll that we are aware of was put on by LinuxDev.Net,
viewable at:

http://linuxdev.net/cgi-bin/pollit/poll_it.cgi?load=lastpoll

Or, does LinuxWorld own LinuxDev.Net?

> Postgres is certainly significantly slower than MySQL according to the
> MySQL benchmarks

Is that the benchmarks that are still based on v6.4.2? *raised
eyebrow* We saw a significant performance increase when we moved from the
old 'table locking' to MVCC ...

Also, please note also that those benchmarks were/are based on
what MySQL is capable of, not what the other SQL servers are capable of.
For instance, if I take an SQL query that has been "optimized for MySQL"
and run it verbatim under PostgreSQL, the difference is a 2sec result for
MySQL vs 19sec for PostgreSQL ... if I re-write that query for
PostgreSQL's featuers (namely, using subselects), i can get the query down
to 1sec *shrug*

Would be interesting to see us (PostgreSQL) come up with
benchmarks against MySQL...we'd be able to put stuff like "couldn't
test under MySQL, since they don't support this SQL construct"...

Marc G. Fournier ICQ#7615664 IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org
primary: scrappy(at)hub(dot)org secondary: scrappy(at){freebsd|postgresql}.org