Re: Is my MySQL Gaining ?

On Sat, 27 Dec 2003, Carl Anderson wrote:
> This sentiment of ease of use is being repeated in this thread. Can
> those of you who feel that Postgres has ease of use problems be a bit
> more specific. Something like:

I'm not sure that Postgres is harder to use than MySQL (this is why I
called it a myth). Now, because I started with Postgres first and then had
to support MySQL afterward, I found MySQL a pain (and still do). Frankly,
I think that Postgres is a wonderful product, and this is why I use it for
everything that I do. Our university has just paid a one-time fee for
perpetual Oracle licenses, so for me Postgres and Oracle are at the same
level in terms of cost - and I still chose Postgres, mostly because I
found it easier to administer than Oracle.

However, there are some areas where I think Postgres could be a bit more
user friendly:

Some clearer documentation on the postgresql.conf settings, with perhaps
some example setups. The default settings are really not good for much
(which is stated in the docs), but perhaps having a DB 'slow' out of the
box for almost every setting is not a great idea. Maybe a configuration
script? (Dare I say 'Wizard'?)

MacOS X binaries. I have a bunch of friends who keep asking me MySQL
questions for their MacOS X machines (laptops and desktops). Since I don't
use MacOS much (despite the fact that my laptop is a Powerbook G4) and
MySQL even less, I can't be of much help. My first advice is always
'remove MySQL and install Postgres', which never gets a welcome response.
I might be able to help in this area in terms of providing a box to do
MacOS X builds, etc.. Marc Liyanage's page
(http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/postgresql/) is pretty helpful, but
not easy to find from the postgres.org site.

The other reason why a lot of friends of mine use MySQL is because the
dinky PHP/Perl/etc blog/photo gallery/web app they found on Freshmeat,
etc. was built without a database abstraction layer and needs to be gutted
to support Postgres. Maybe this is where the advocacy site and community
can help the most. We could list these utilities that only support MySQL
and ask for members of the community to contact the developers to help
them support Postgres. Now, there are a lot of these types of apps, most
of them aren't worth downloading let alone fixing, but unfortunately I
suspect this preventing a lot of people from using Postgres.

Anyway, those are just a couple of ideas. I'd be happy to help out with
some of them in anyway that I could. If anyone wants to spearhead these,
let me know if you need help.

Cheers,

Chris

--
Christopher Murtagh
Enterprise Systems Administrator
ISR / Web Communications Group
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec
Canada

Tel.: (514) 398-3122
Fax: (514) 398-2017