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Ask HN: It's 2023, how do you choose between MySQL and Postgres?

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Re: Ask HN: It's 2023, how do you choose between MySQL and Postgres?

#221

Post by srcreigh »

JohnBooty wrote: post #146
kiernanmcgowan wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used postgres for the past decade, I tried MySQL for a side project to see whats changed with it. The sad answer is that it feels like nothing has changed - Oracle seems to have let what used to be a core technology of the industry languish. I'm sure there are use cases where MySQL will be the better choice over postgres, but the future for the stack looks bleak.

Oracle seems to have let what used to be a core technology of the industry languish I think slowly squeezing the life from MySQL was a very explicit goal for them. After the big wins (Wal-Mart, etc) MySQL had 15-20 years ago I think it was very clear MySQL was going to chip away at more and more of Oracle's business. I wonder how much Oracle spends on MySQL every year? They're spending a lot of money to keep MySQL at…

Strange take when FB, twitter, Square and new startups such as Faire(#4 valued private YC co) are all using MySQL to some/large degree. Stripe uses MySQL too in combination with other DBs including Postgres.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2023, how do you choose between MySQL and Postgres?

#222

Post by supergram »

dijit wrote: post #36

There is almost no good reason to choose MySQL over PostgreSQL for any operational reason, I did a deep dive many moons ago (before major improvements in performance to postgres) and people were saying that MySQL was faster. I found that not to be true and the differences have only gained even more favour towards postgres. also, I assume you mean MariaDB as MySQL is owned by Oracle and I would greatly implore anyone…

> * Memory tables

PostgreSQL has memory tables too.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2023, how do you choose between MySQL and Postgres?

#223

Post by bkuehl »

spprashant wrote: post #218
bkuehl wrote: post #203

A lot of comments for Postgres, but it's the only major DB in 2023 that does not let you choose your character collation when creating a database. That is pretty much a deal breaker day 1. Guess you'll be doing a tolower() on every db search and not use indices which will kill performance or using column collation casts on every search query. I just don't get it. I once tried to migrate a SQL Server DB to Postgres an…

Am I missing something here? Postgres does allow you to choose character collation when creating a database, as well as when creating new columns.

I'm sorry, I was wrong in that Postgres does let you specify a few character collations at the DB level, but they are pretty much ASCII vs UNICODE with no case-insensitive configurations. You can create collations in v12 and assign them to particular columns.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2023, how do you choose between MySQL and Postgres?

#224

Post by jitl »

pawelduda wrote: post #175
donatj wrote: post #109

Unpopular opinion on HN apparently, but MySQL - It's less featureful, and I'd consider that a strong virtue in the YAGNI camp - less to go wrong, less mental overhead. - Maintenance is simpler and far less necessary in my general experience. - Replication is simpler and more reliable. - You can tell the query optimizer what to do. When this is needed, you'll be thankful. It's a godsend. That said, I wouldn't run Orac…

What's the ratio of solving DB perf issues by optimizing it and letting the planner do its work, to telling it what to do? For me it's like 1000:1. And that one case I remember was perfectly solvable the regular way, with a little more time.

Postgres query planner suddenly deciding to do something silly in the middle of the night has taken Notion down a few times. It's quite annoying, and it's very frustrating to have no recourse.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2023, how do you choose between MySQL and Postgres?

#225

Post by arp242 »

paulddraper wrote: post #219
dijit wrote: post #36

There is almost no good reason to choose MySQL over PostgreSQL for any operational reason, I did a deep dive many moons ago (before major improvements in performance to postgres) and people were saying that MySQL was faster. I found that not to be true and the differences have only gained even more favour towards postgres. also, I assume you mean MariaDB as MySQL is owned by Oracle and I would greatly implore anyone…

MySQL is certainly faster for writes. https://www.uber.com/blog/postgres-to-mysql-migration/

I would be wary putting too much stock in a seven year old post on the topic; lots of stuff has changed. Specifically, at least one person claimed that a patch greatly improved PostgreSQL for this use case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26285452

Re: Ask HN: It's 2023, how do you choose between MySQL and Postgres?

#226

Post by minaguib »

That's EASY

PostgreSQL. The answer has always been PostgreSQL, even at the height of MySQL's popularity and LAMP craze.

It is a VASTLY better piece of software and ecosystem - yet it's boring at the same time - all things I demand from the DB system whether it's a toy project or an enterprise app.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2023, how do you choose between MySQL and Postgres?

#227

Post by jjeaff »

EamonnMR wrote: post #150
donatj wrote: post #109

Unpopular opinion on HN apparently, but MySQL - It's less featureful, and I'd consider that a strong virtue in the YAGNI camp - less to go wrong, less mental overhead. - Maintenance is simpler and far less necessary in my general experience. - Replication is simpler and more reliable. - You can tell the query optimizer what to do. When this is needed, you'll be thankful. It's a godsend. That said, I wouldn't run Orac…

I would disagree on maintenance being simpler. I have never had Postgres randomly munge a table and require me to run a command to fix it.

I have not had that happen in MySQL either, at least, not with innodb. what command would that be?

I do remember getting bad tables with myisam tables a decade ago, sometimes after a bad shutdown.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2023, how do you choose between MySQL and Postgres?

#228

Post by arp242 »

srcreigh wrote: post #147
dijit wrote: post #36

There is almost no good reason to choose MySQL over PostgreSQL for any operational reason, I did a deep dive many moons ago (before major improvements in performance to postgres) and people were saying that MySQL was faster. I found that not to be true and the differences have only gained even more favour towards postgres. also, I assume you mean MariaDB as MySQL is owned by Oracle and I would greatly implore anyone…

Postgres is >50x slower for range queries(example below) and is akin to using array-of-pointers (ie Java) whereas MySQL supports array-of-struct (C). Illustration from Dropbox scaling talk below. Sneak peek photo [1] (from [2]). Just imagine its literally 500-1000x more convoluted per B-tree leaf node. That's every Postgres table unless you CLUSTER periodically. [1]: https://josipmisko.com/img/clustered-vs-noncluster…

I've definitely run in to these kind of issues and learned about them the hard way, but I found that in PostgreSQL it's quite a bit easier to understand what is actually going on due to better documentation and tooling, and I've found this very valuable. Maybe it's just because I've spent more time with PostgreSQL than MariaDB, but MariaDB has often left me quite a bit more confused (on performance, but also other topics).

Re: Ask HN: It's 2023, how do you choose between MySQL and Postgres?

#229

Post by arp242 »

Izkata wrote: post #160
geenat wrote: post #143

I know it seems dumb, but postgres really needs to add the simple developer experience stuff like: SHOW CREATE TABLE; SHOW TABLES; SHOW DATABASES; SHOW PROCESSLIST; CockroachDB added these aliases ages ago.

I forget if there's an equivalent for the first one, but from psql there is a translation of mysql's "DESC table" as "\d table", and the rest are: \dt \l SELECT * FROM pg_stat_activity;

> I forget if there's an equivalent for the first one

Not really; PostgreSQL doesn't store the original query, so you'll need to re-create it from pg_class, pg_attribute, and all of that (which is really what \d and such in psql do). The easiest way is probably pg_dump, but it's best to just get used to \-commands because it's really just the same thing.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2023, how do you choose between MySQL and Postgres?

#230

Post by mxvanzant »

hamilyon2 wrote: post #174
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> avoid Oracle as if it has herpes herpes isn't that bad. most people will get it in their lifetime. 1 in 6 people have hsv-2, the less common variant. trying to avoid herpes is like trying to avoid chickenpox (although herpes isn't nearly as harmful as chickenpox). you should avoid Oracle like it's a blood pathogen.

As a person who has herpes firmly in his nerves, I would say don't underestimate herpes.

I read this guy's book and he has some good ideas (and references to back them up). You don't need to get his book as his website also has all of that material+. http://doctoryourself.com/herpes.html

Another related site: http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index.shtml (scroll down for articles).

None of the above will help though in deciding between Postgres or MySQL ;)

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