Re: postgre vs MySQL

On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Alvaro Herrera
<alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
> Ivan Sergio Borgonovo wrote:
> > On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:13:14 -0700
> > paul rivers <rivers(dot)paul(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> >
> > > For a database of InnoDB tables, people tend to replicate the
> > > database, and then backup the slave (unless the db is trivially
> >
> > That recalled me the *unsupported* feeling I have that it is easier
> > to setup a HA replication solution on MySQL.
>
> Well, if you have a crappy system that cannot sustain concurrent load or
> even be backed up concurrently with regular operation, one solution is
> to write a kick-ass replication system.
>
> The other solution is to enhance the ability of the system to deal with
> concurrent operation.
>
> We keep hearing how great all those Web 2.0 sites are; Slashdot, Flickr,
> etc; and they all run on farms and farms of MySQL servers, "because
> MySQL replication is so good". I wonder if replication is an actual
> _need_ or it's there just because the other aspects of the system are so
> crappy.

Reminds me of the saying that for each problem, there is a simple,
elegant solution that is completely wrong. It amazes me that slony,
being basically a "bolt on" replication solution has given me much
fewer problems than MySQL replication which is known for silent
failures. Slony is by no means perfect, but it is quite impressive as
both a replication tool and an upgrade tool.

An awful lot of the sites running on MySQL are running on it primarily
because it's what they started with, and now it's hard to switch
because their code is chock full of mysqlisms like "select field1,
field2 from table group by field1" and so on that no other database is
going to swallow without throwing an error.