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Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

blog.2ndquadrant.com

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Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#61

Post by pmarreck »

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…

So why is replication necessary?

Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#62

Post by dom0 »

rpedela wrote: post #32
pgaddict wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A good bug tracker makes it easier to track status and priority. The ironic thing about the blog post is that it is certainly possible there is a 14.5 year old bug in Postgres, but how would you know? Who is going to go look at 14.5 year old bug report emails and try to figure out if any of them are still open?

Contra: A 14.5 year old open issue that is genuinely untouched for 14.5 years is most likely irrelevant, either because it was swept up, has become obsolete or is some kind of request that no one cares about (otherwise it would not sit around untouched for 14.5 years).

Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#64

Post by devmunchies »

pmarreck wrote: post #59
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…

Uber had a pretty good argument not long ago on going from Postgres back to MySQL: https://eng.uber.com/mysql-migration/

Link to HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12166585

Many here discussed why it wasn't a good argument and that Uber just didn't know what they were doing.

Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#65

Post by rpedela »

dom0 wrote: post #62
rpedela wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good bug tracker makes it easier to track status and priority. The ironic thing about the blog post is that it is certainly possible there is a 14.5 year old bug in Postgres, but how would you know? Who is going to go look at 14.5 year old bug report emails and try to figure out if any of them are still open?

Contra: A 14.5 year old open issue that is genuinely untouched for 14.5 years is most likely irrelevant, either because it was swept up, has become obsolete or is some kind of request that no one cares about (otherwise it would not sit around untouched for 14.5 years).

Typically yes, but that is just it. Without a tracker, how do you know for sure?

Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#66

Post by qaq »

astrodust wrote: post #51
pgaddict wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a more serious note, what makes Postgres so reliable is a number of things. For example: * careful patch review process - Sometimes it's a bit grueling, and it takes time to get stuff in, but it's extremely valuable. Not only for finding bugs but alternative approaches to implementing the feature. * careful testing - It's a natural part of the review process (Does the patch have tests? Can I come up with something…

* Not being owned by Oracle, a corporation that slowly sucks the life out of everything it touches.

Slowly :)?

Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#67

Post by pgaddict »

danudey wrote: post #42
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…

> 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:

Yeah, I share this opinion. I may agree with some points Simon makes in the blog post, but I certainly dislike how it's presented.

> 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.

I really doubt bug tracker is where people start their contributions. I mean, you don't go to a bug tracker, because (a) if it's broken someone else is probably already working on fixing it, and (b) the unsolved issues are rather complex and not quite suitable for new contributors.

There's actually a bunch of pages on the wiki that might help you:

* https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/So,_you_want_to_be_a_develo...

* https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/TODO (a nice list of development topics, including some quite simple ones)

I'd recommend picking a feature that matters to you and either add it (if it's missing) or improve it in some way. That's how I started contributing - I improved a bunch of stuff in the internal statistics tracking, because I needed that. I improved a bunch of performance regressions, because they were affecting the systems in our production systems. And so on.

Then start talking to people on pgsql-hackers. Send a patch, review patches from other people in the commitfests.

Re: Why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL

#70

Post by pgaddict »

derefr wrote: post #27

Curious: has anyone tried linking a Postgres installation with a MySQL installation using https://github.com/EnterpriseDB/mysql_fdw ? My intuition is that, if there's anything MySQL does uniquely well on the "being an ACID datastore" front, then this would let you get the best of both worlds—essentially letting some of your Postgres tables use MySQL's storage engines et al .

It's possible, but FWDs are not really a viable solution for "pluggable storage". It also limits what the planner/optimizer can do, and (obviously) it introduces latency because there's network communications.

FWD are a great thing when you need to occasionally access remote systems, but it's not a drop-in replacement for storage.

For example, how exactly would you do consistent backups?

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