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Learn to stop using shiny new things and love MySQL

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Re: Learn to stop using shiny new things and love MySQL

#21
As someone who's only briefly looked into Postgres, are there any disadvantages to going with it instead of MySQL?

It seems (especially from the comments here) that Postgres is something to seriously consider in future projects, but I'm wondering if there are any reasons to stick with MySQL.

Re: Learn to stop using shiny new things and love MySQL

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why anyone in 2015 would pick mysql when postgres is an option. Live postgres. So nice to work with. It's json support is amazing too

You know what, about two weeks ago I was starting a new Rails hobby project, and I thought "all I've heard about for the past year is how everyone loves Postgres", and was about to throw it in there, when I saw a link to Google search trends comparing the two, and MySQL is still so far ahead: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#cmpt=q&q=mysql,+postgr... It's quite possible this is just due to people supporting exis…

It seems weird to me that Postgres and MySQL are both going down. I'd expect interest in Postgres to be rising at the very least—what are people switching to?

Re: Learn to stop using shiny new things and love MySQL

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why anyone in 2015 would pick mysql when postgres is an option. Live postgres. So nice to work with. It's json support is amazing too

You know what, about two weeks ago I was starting a new Rails hobby project, and I thought "all I've heard about for the past year is how everyone loves Postgres", and was about to throw it in there, when I saw a link to Google search trends comparing the two, and MySQL is still so far ahead: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#cmpt=q&q=mysql,+postgr... It's quite possible this is just due to people supporting exis…

Is google trends really how you should be choosing your stack?

Re: Learn to stop using shiny new things and love MySQL

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why anyone in 2015 would pick mysql when postgres is an option. Live postgres. So nice to work with. It's json support is amazing too

You know what, about two weeks ago I was starting a new Rails hobby project, and I thought "all I've heard about for the past year is how everyone loves Postgres", and was about to throw it in there, when I saw a link to Google search trends comparing the two, and MySQL is still so far ahead: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#cmpt=q&q=mysql,+postgr... It's quite possible this is just due to people supporting exis…

MySQL is popular because it's easy to use (in the same sense as PHP), easy to setup, and has a lot of tutorials written for it. Also speed used to be a pretty big factor, but that was only because MyISAM took shortcuts with data consistency.

If you care about your data and would rather not deal with the many problems MySQL inevitably brings, then Postgres is the better option. I can't say I've seen many compelling reasons to use MySQL over Postgres other than "what if we need to replace you with a freelance PHP guy", "I want to pay lower wages", and "I want to use phpmyadmin". (Btw: check out Sequel Pro and Querious!)

Popularity isn't a very good reason to choose something. Postgres will remain a juggernaut for a long time. Unless you really think there's a good chance you'll need to hire somebody that only knows MySQL, then I'd go with Postgres.

Re: Learn to stop using shiny new things and love MySQL

#26

How big is the team over at pinterest managing the MySQL infrastructure? I think this is the big difference here. I have a particular project. The database has well over 1 billion rows in multiple tables which need joins to generate complex reporting. As the only tech here, there is only so much I can be working on. Before... time spent on trying to get MySQL to work, was time not well spent. I spent countless hours…

A lot of the original article is about a retrospective of technologies pinterest seemed to have picked before they were able to afford a fairly large team. If you do have a really huge engineering budget and can afford a commercial support contract, you are now in the business of trying to spend money moreso to maintain your existing business than to try to scale it faster and faster.

Re: Learn to stop using shiny new things and love MySQL

#27
post #5

I agree, I've found through painful experience that the shiny and new, while incredibly fun, tends to cost more than it's worth. With that said, if you're going to take the prudent route and use an established database platform, why in the name of all that is holy would you pick MySQL over Postgres? Granted, I am rather biased, but I do have extensive experience using both in anger. Every time I have to use MySQL I w…

I don't know why anyone in 2015 would pick mysql when postgres is an option. Live postgres. So nice to work with. It's json support is amazing too

Agreed. I consider MySQL a red flag and avoid any projects or teams that choose it over Postgres. Postgres is reliable, flexible, fast, and well documented. It's one of the crowning achievements of the open source world.

Re: Learn to stop using shiny new things and love MySQL

#28
post #5

I agree, I've found through painful experience that the shiny and new, while incredibly fun, tends to cost more than it's worth. With that said, if you're going to take the prudent route and use an established database platform, why in the name of all that is holy would you pick MySQL over Postgres? Granted, I am rather biased, but I do have extensive experience using both in anger. Every time I have to use MySQL I w…

mySQL has more baked in solutions for replication that don't require a support contract or a convoluted mess of choosing between half a dozen half baked options for higher availability?

Honestly, it's the one area that I feel that open-source PostgreSQL is really lacking, and that is a good replication/automagic-failover story. I think MS-SQL is probably the best (but almost as expensive as EnterpriseDB support contract) for the supported versions. MySQL is probably the best option for a lot of people.

That said, I think RethinkDB is a pretty decent all-around option for most workloads at this point.

Re: Learn to stop using shiny new things and love MySQL

#29
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what, about two weeks ago I was starting a new Rails hobby project, and I thought "all I've heard about for the past year is how everyone loves Postgres", and was about to throw it in there, when I saw a link to Google search trends comparing the two, and MySQL is still so far ahead: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#cmpt=q&q=mysql,+postgr... It's quite possible this is just due to people supporting exis…

MySQL is popular because it's easy to use (in the same sense as PHP), easy to setup, and has a lot of tutorials written for it. Also speed used to be a pretty big factor, but that was only because MyISAM took shortcuts with data consistency. If you care about your data and would rather not deal with the many problems MySQL inevitably brings, then Postgres is the better option. I can't say I've seen many compelling re…

Given I haven't done anything with it in nearly 7 years now.. but every time I've touched MySQL for anything, there was always a quirky behavior that bit me in the ass that no other dbms does...

Postgres, MS-SQL, Firebird, Oracle, DB2 are all better options in my mind... unless you need a good replication story, without a pricey support contract, then Postgres and Firebird are sadly out of the running imho.

Re: Learn to stop using shiny new things and love MySQL

#30
post #5

I agree, I've found through painful experience that the shiny and new, while incredibly fun, tends to cost more than it's worth. With that said, if you're going to take the prudent route and use an established database platform, why in the name of all that is holy would you pick MySQL over Postgres? Granted, I am rather biased, but I do have extensive experience using both in anger. Every time I have to use MySQL I w…

I don't know why anyone in 2015 would pick mysql when postgres is an option. Live postgres. So nice to work with. It's json support is amazing too

Depends on your data. Sometimes (particularly when you have only 1-3 tables) MySQL is much faster and you have to go out of your way writing stored procedures to make Postgres compete.

Example:

   select COUNT(1), status FROM some_table GROUP BY status ORDER BY status; --  Postgres 10x slower.
Also, mysql CLI is IMO much nicer than the postgres version. Better and faster autocompletes.
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