Re: strange postgresql x mysql comparison in forrester analyse

On Wed, 14 Oct 2009, Thom Brown wrote:

> This made me laugh too: "PostgreSQL: An offering that lags in enterprise
> database features and functionality...

I hate to break it to you, but by the criteria listed for what's an
"enterprise" database:

"support for application development, high availability, disaster
recovery, security, high performance, a wide range of data types, and
backup and recovery."

And later:

"support for high availability, security, performance, manageability, and
integration with applications."

PostgreSQL *is* weak. It's got no integrated replication or
high-availability to that business people can see, strictly low-level
command-line tools for backup and management, lack of any obvious fancy
development tools known to work with the product, outright rejection of
feel-good security measures unless they are actually effective...all
completely valid things to criticize. If these things are the criteria
you use to measure "enterprise", it's completely fair to say PostgreSQL
doesn't match the competition he's comparing against. I don't think the
reports is all that biased, besides the fact that what the analyst (and
lots of other business people too!) feel is important doesn't match the
priorities of the PG community.

Let's consider the specific criticisms:

"PostgreSQL has some good capabilities across the board but lags in
performance, scalability, administration, application development, support
for disparate data types, and VLDBs."

And consider each of them:

Performance: PostgreSQL flat out fails on some of the common TPC
benchmark queries because it doesn't have support for features needed to
execute on them within the timeframe required (Jignesh at Sun did a good
report on which it does and doesn't handle a while back). If stuff like
that is your benchmark, performance really is bad. Do not be confused
because PG works great on *most* database tasks, there are plenty it's
miserable at compared with the commercial offerings they're comparing
against.

Scalability: No integrated support for any sort of replication,
clustering, or connection pooling? You've just failed as far as this part
of the market is concerned.

Administration: I like powerful command line tools even if they're
cryptic. The market this report is written to does not.

Application development: the tools people PostgreSQL apps with are great
if you're got a UNIX-ish background. They look pretty primitive to those
who don't get that though. Would you bet your business that the
PostgreSQL .Net driver is high quality? That's the sort of stuff that's
being evaluated here. (Not to pick on the authors of that driver, I know
that code has been moving along nicely, just the most obvious example of
priority disconnect between this community and the market at large I could
think of).

Support for disparate data types: no idea what that's supposed to mean,
here I think the analyst may have missed the power of the Postgres type
system.

VLDBs: At the point this was written, there wasn't even any clear
in-place upgrade path for PostgreSQL database. Instant thumbs-down from
most large database prospects. There's plenty of other missing features
here too; Simon made a nice list at
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Simon_Riggs%27_Development_Projects#Very_Large_Database_.28VLDB.29

Again, these items are probably not your priorities or you wouldn't be
using PostgreSQL, but I think the analyst is right that they're often
those of the customers they're aiming the report at. I'm quite pleased at
the ever expanding reach of applications PostgreSQL is appropriate for,
but to be both fair and accurate here you really need to temper that with
recognizing how many it's just not right for. Yet!

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