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Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

blog.2ndquadrant.com

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Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#41

Post by geofft »

pgaddict wrote: post #28
talawahdotnet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a bit of a false dichotomy. Do the Postgres Devs genuinely see having a bug tracker as a "bad thing"? Or are they just stuck in their ways at this point? A mailing list hardly seems like an efficient method for tracking bugs unless a major part of the efficiency is reducing signal to noise by make it more difficult for non-developer or non-paying users to file bugs

Well, it was not really meant entirely seriously, of course. I can't speak for other devs contributing to the project, but I think the mailing list is a great way to do this. Ultimately, what you want is a simple way to track information about reported issues, discuss the details, make it reasonably simple to search for existing issues, and post patches fixing the issue. A mailing list does all of that, without havin…

One thing a bug tracker solves for me is, I have some time to work on things, what should I work on? (This is a different search problem from, I think I'm having this bug, has anyone else had it?)

With a mailing list, I can work on the most recent problems, and with my memory, I can work on the problems that most stand out in my memory (either because they affect me personally, or the process of solving them has attracted my background attention). Neither of those seem like good ways to prioritize things.

But with a bug tracker, I can look for old problems that have not had attention paid to them, and pay attention to them.

I certainly agree a mailing list is a good approach, and many bug-tracking systems operate essentially around mailing lists: RT adds a tracking number to the subject line, and Debbugs essentially creates one mailing list per bug.

Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#42

Post by danudey »

erulabs wrote: post #3

MySQL is bad because they've tracked a bug across 3 different companies & working groups. Postgres is good because we have no open bug tracker whatsoever and we're always adding new features! I can't figure out who this article is for - certainly not DBAs!

Not being sarcastic: this type of article always seems to be written with an audience of "people who love to pick a side and hate the other side, but haven't picked a side yet".

The article picks an extreme example and uses insinuation and condescencion to denigrate MySQL based on one example, but it goes further than that. For example:

> Maybe its wrong to start a flame war on this

So he knows that's what he's doing, and he's okay with that.

> but I need to say, at a personal level, that this is exactly the reason why I have spent years contributing to PostgreSQL and never once contributed to MySQL.

Maybe, but if I wanted to contribute to Postgres where would I start? There's no bug tracker to look through. With the MySQL family, there is.

Also, I'm willing to bet that most people who've contributed to MySQL haven't contributed to Postgres and vice-versa, so to act as though you're doing it from some kind of principled stance rather than just practicality makes no sense to me.

This entire blog post is a giant attack ad against MySQL for the purpose of making it look bad. "MySQL left a bug unfixed for 14 years while its users' data slowly corrupted. Vote Postgres for RDBMS, and I promise to keep your auto_increment fields consistent, day in and day out."

Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#43

Post by true_religion »

icebraining wrote: post #40
craigkerstiens wrote: post #9

I'm a huge Postgres fan and yes I'm probably biased towards it. I do think it's probably the best open source database out there, but I also don't love these types of posts. What makes something better than another things is a whole host of things, not just highlighting one really bad case from the other side. I'm sure if the MySQL world wanted they could point out ways that MySQL is so much better than Postgres. Jus…

Just look back at how long it too for us to get upsert, we're finally getting a better replication story in recent years. Coincidentally, using those two features together on MySQL can have fun results: "Because the results of INSERT ... SELECT statements depend on the ordering of rows from the SELECT and this order cannot always be guaranteed, it is possible when logging INSERT ... SELECT ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE sta…

> An INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE statement against a table having more than one unique or primary key is also marked as unsafe.

Insanity. Also pretty much the reason I stopped using MySQL. I am not a DBA. A very small part of my job is actually interacting with the database, and I have to trust that statement execution will be consistent in all cases. That's something PostgresQL has been able to give for the past 10 years.

MySQL is still not there yet, despite being backed by a "database" company with over $30 billion in revenue per year. If Oracle, with all their domain experience and reputation incentive can't get MySQl into a sane and stable state, then its fundamentals must be built on sand.

Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#44

Post by SoonDead »

erulabs wrote: post #3

MySQL is bad because they've tracked a bug across 3 different companies & working groups. Postgres is good because we have no open bug tracker whatsoever and we're always adding new features! I can't figure out who this article is for - certainly not DBAs!

That is a pretty good summary of why I have been cringing continuously reading the article.

Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#45

Post by ris »

wolph wrote: post #25
tyingq wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber switched from Postgres to MySql. https://eng.uber.com/mysql-migration/ If I remember right, though, mostly because their use pattern was more like a key value store, and MySQL worked better for that pattern.

Thank you, very interesting read! They do raise a few good points where MySQL outperforms PostgreSQL. I suppose that's one of the trade offs between them, data safety vs. performance.

> very interesting read!

Well, it's also quite a misleading read as the numerous rebuttals will point out:

http://rhaas.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/ubers-move-away-from-pos...

https://blog.2ndquadrant.com/thoughts-on-ubers-list-of-postg...

http://use-the-index-luke.com/blog/2016-07-29/on-ubers-choic...

Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#46

Post by syncsynchalt »

nobleach wrote: post #16

Perhaps a better title would have been: "One way in which PostgreSQL is better than MySQL". While I love Postgres, I have to admit that MySQL has its usefulness as well. I just did a side project where I started in node and postgres, realized I needed to hand it over to a guy who would want to end up hosting it on some 5 dollar a month PHP-esque plan. So, I bit the bullet, migrated the DB over to MySQL, and rewrote t…

In my experience writing software with generic SQL support the example shown here highlights something that's endemic in MySQL.

MySQL has a bug (eg. #199) or some deficiency (no subselects, no transactions, incorrect utf-8 support)[1]. The community's solution is a workaround (Here's how to restructure your select so that you don't need a subselect. Maybe you could use UUIDs instead of integer keys). Meanwhile the problem never existed in Postgres, which seemed to have been correctly and completely implemented from the start. After several years the issue is fixed in MySQL and the boosters ask that the score be reset and the clock re-started.

Postgres has its deficiencies and bugs but other than replication they never seemed core to the product in the way that they were for MySQL.

[1] These deficiencies span several decades and might seem unfair to bring up but I want to show that what the article is highlighting is just another round of the same problem.

Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#47

Post by leetrout »

cbsmith wrote: post #39
danudey wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember ages ago (a decade? or so?) I started working at a company using Postgres for a project, and one of the things my boss asked me to do was to set up replication for the database. We had it on all of our MySQL databases, and everyone knew (myself included) that Postgres was a more serious, enterprise-y, "real" database. Well, I googled around and couldn't find anything conclusive, so I hopped into the / chan…

Meh. It works both ways. There was a time if you asked for transactions on MySQL...

And I still don't have my DDL transactions... :) ;)

Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#48

Post by icebraining »

danudey wrote: post #38
craigkerstiens wrote: post #9

I'm a huge Postgres fan and yes I'm probably biased towards it. I do think it's probably the best open source database out there, but I also don't love these types of posts. What makes something better than another things is a whole host of things, not just highlighting one really bad case from the other side. I'm sure if the MySQL world wanted they could point out ways that MySQL is so much better than Postgres. Jus…

I remember ages ago (a decade? or so?) I started working at a company using Postgres for a project, and one of the things my boss asked me to do was to set up replication for the database. We had it on all of our MySQL databases, and everyone knew (myself included) that Postgres was a more serious, enterprise-y, "real" database. Well, I googled around and couldn't find anything conclusive, so I hopped into the / chan…

As a Postgres fan, I do agree that the Postgres community has a more "RTFM attitude" than MySQL's. I personally don't have a problem with this, but I can understand that it might steer some people away.

Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#49

Post by icebraining »

nobleach wrote: post #16

Perhaps a better title would have been: "One way in which PostgreSQL is better than MySQL". While I love Postgres, I have to admit that MySQL has its usefulness as well. I just did a side project where I started in node and postgres, realized I needed to hand it over to a guy who would want to end up hosting it on some 5 dollar a month PHP-esque plan. So, I bit the bullet, migrated the DB over to MySQL, and rewrote t…

http://www.valcatohosting.com/shared-hosting/

Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#50

Post by astrodust »

leetrout wrote: post #47
cbsmith wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. It works both ways. There was a time if you asked for transactions on MySQL...

And I still don't have my DDL transactions... :) ;)

This is a pretty huge deal in some uses cases. It makes undoing a bad migration trivial.
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