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What’s so exciting about Postgres?

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Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#21

Post by aloukissas »

craigkerstiens wrote: post #8
sandinmyjoints wrote: post #3

> It was really funny, Uber switched from MySQL to Postgres, and then Postgres to MySQL. So they’ve gone back and forth a couple of times, but when they’ve swapped to Postgres, they had to figure out – they had all this app logic that relied on things being case-insensitive, because the database just doesn’t respect case search. This suggests to me that the guest here maybe doesn't know about collations? But that doe…

Guest here. The context is Uber was on MySQL which by default doesn't respect (or at least in their version and setup at the time) case sensitivity. To MySQL craig is the same as Craig when matching. Their app for search relied on this. The solution for them was the citext data type to create a case insensitive string - https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/citext.html I'm fairly familiar with Postgres, but have not hea…

It's been a while and don't remember the specifics, but when we implemented a POSIX-compliant filesystem at Maginatics (acq. by EMC), we used MySQL (Percona actually) to store the FS logic (inode numbers, filenames, etc) and case sensitivity was one of the FS features. Maybe Percona supports it? I do remember (at least at that time) that full utf-8 support was poor though.

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#22

Post by aloukissas »

aloukissas wrote: post #21
craigkerstiens wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guest here. The context is Uber was on MySQL which by default doesn't respect (or at least in their version and setup at the time) case sensitivity. To MySQL craig is the same as Craig when matching. Their app for search relied on this. The solution for them was the citext data type to create a case insensitive string - https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/citext.html I'm fairly familiar with Postgres, but have not hea…

It's been a while and don't remember the specifics, but when we implemented a POSIX-compliant filesystem at Maginatics (acq. by EMC), we used MySQL (Percona actually) to store the FS logic (inode numbers, filenames, etc) and case sensitivity was one of the FS features. Maybe Percona supports it? I do remember (at least at that time) that full utf-8 support was poor though.

Btw, don't get me started about case-sensitive file systems - Windows got it right (case-preserving, but case-insensitive). Why should both /home/ellen/Music and /home/ellen/music exist? :)

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#23

Post by hashtagmarkup »

Animats wrote: post #11

Databases shouldn't be exciting. They should just work . The main reason webcrap works is because the databases underneath work. If the Javascript crowd had to manage data storage, nothing persistent would work reliably.

> If the Javascript crowd had to manage data storage, nothing persistent would work reliably.

Wait until this guy learns what the JS in "json" column types means, and how the largest webcrap sites rely on them for persistence.

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#24

Post by systemvoltage »

bigbubba wrote: post #18
msla wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Databases shouldn't be exciting. They should just work . A complicated thing which just works is exciting.

One man's exciting is another's snorefest. A lot of people would probably laugh at the suggestion that anything involving computers could be exciting.

It is unproductive to talk about subjective opinions of excitement.

The GP was referring to "Databases shouldn't be exciting" - not in the traditional sense of the word, but a metaphor that hinges on "excitement" being new features, frivolous decorations, unnecessary tangents, losing vision of what a database should do, frantic patching and heated bikeshedding discussions.

It wasn't meant as "Ooooo I am excited about a database".

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#25

Post by anarazel »

shay_ker wrote: post #20

Surprised they didn't cover transaction id wraparound, which has caused more than a few public outages at scale. IIRC some Postgres folks have a plan to fix it? Maybe Craig knows?

> Surprised they didn't cover transaction id wraparound, which has caused more than a few public outages at scale.

There have been some significant improvements in the last couple years - most importantly the introduction of the freeze map in 9.6. But also quite a sprinkling of other incremental improvements.

It can obviously still be a problem, but it's not as pronounced as it once was.

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#26

Post by viraptor »

aloukissas wrote: post #22
aloukissas wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a while and don't remember the specifics, but when we implemented a POSIX-compliant filesystem at Maginatics (acq. by EMC), we used MySQL (Percona actually) to store the FS logic (inode numbers, filenames, etc) and case sensitivity was one of the FS features. Maybe Percona supports it? I do remember (at least at that time) that full utf-8 support was poor though.

Btw, don't get me started about case-sensitive file systems - Windows got it right (case-preserving, but case-insensitive). Why should both /home/ellen/Music and /home/ellen/music exist? :)

Because once you go there, you have to answer questions which are not as easy. Does M match m? Does i match ı? Does a match あ? Does あ match ア? Does m match 𝓂? What happens when they need to coexist?

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#27

Post by axegon_ »

Apart from being the most mature relational database, I would argue the code that runs it. It's pure poetry. I am yet to see code this clean anywhere. Just opening any source code file at random[1] will show you exactly what I mean.

[1] https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/src/backend...

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#28

Post by bigbubba »

systemvoltage wrote: post #24
bigbubba wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One man's exciting is another's snorefest. A lot of people would probably laugh at the suggestion that anything involving computers could be exciting.

It is unproductive to talk about subjective opinions of excitement. The GP was referring to "Databases shouldn't be exciting" - not in the traditional sense of the word, but a metaphor that hinges on "excitement" being new features, frivolous decorations, unnecessary tangents, losing vision of what a database should do, frantic patching and heated bikeshedding discussions. It wasn't meant as "Ooooo I am excited about…

I think you're restating my point.

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#29

Post by dragonwriter »

Animats wrote: post #11

Databases shouldn't be exciting. They should just work . The main reason webcrap works is because the databases underneath work. If the Javascript crowd had to manage data storage, nothing persistent would work reliably.

> Databases shouldn't be exciting. They should just work.

With enough experience with the alternative, things that just work are exciting.

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#30

Post by Ralfp »

rbanffy wrote: post #12

I started using PostgreSQL because, at the time, MySQL wouldn't do subqueries. The fact it silently truncated VARCHAR data to the size of the column and didn't give out an error didn't help much. Overall, my impression is that the project's philosophy is to do the Correct Thing, even if it's slow.

Few years back I've had friend explain the difference between MySQL and PostgreSQL like this:

- MySQL: do it fast, then make it right - PSQL: do it right, then make it fast

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