Re: postgre vs MySQL

On Tue, 11 Mar 2008, rrahul wrote:

> I waned you people you post your views on the following comparision points
> 1] Performance 2] Scalablity 4] Speed 6] robustness

These are all covered in more detail that you probably want at
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/techdocs.83

The quick summary is that MySQL is very fast when using its MyISAM engine,
which is prone to many data integrity issues. If you switch to the more
reliable InnoDB engine most of the performance advantage MySQL might have
goes away. There are also a couple of areas where PostgreSQL is almost
always faster: complex joins and scalability under a heavy transaction
load are two examples.

> 3] community support

It's not unheard of for someone who is really having a problem that looks
like a database bug to get one of the core PostgreSQL contributors poking
at their box to figure out what's going on. Meanwhile, MySQL can't even
get enough resources together to get their new version out the door (V5.1
has been lingering around since November of 2005), so there's little
developer capacity to spare to help users like the support you find on the
mailing lists here. I think if you poke around a bit you'll discover the
MySQL community has been rather unhappy with the number of bugs in MySQL
5.0 and 5.1. A good intro is
http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2007/10/04/mysql-quality-of-old-and-new-features/

> 5] ease of use

MySQL has more applications aimed at making it easier to use the database
floating around. If all you want to build is a simple system, it's
probably got an edge there. Whether that's still true if you're building
something complicated enough that you can take advantage of some of the
more powerful PostgreSQL features MySQL doesn't have is certainly
debatable.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith(at)gregsmith(dot)com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD