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Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

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Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#121

Post by nerfhammer »

chc wrote: post #60
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #12

Will anyone please explain the tactical reasons why PostgreSQL won? It's pretty obvious it has. I've basically ignored the database wars for a few years, so it's kind of interesting to see that everyone's using PostgreSQL now.

I don't know if I would really say Postgres won. Among people who care about databases, Postgres has always been the more popular of the big two free databases. Postgres was actually dedicated to being a good relational database, whereas MySQL in its earlier days was willing to cut corners to the point where it wasn't even ACID in most common configurations. But MySQL was faster (because, again, cutting corners) and…

don't forget postgres didn't officially support replication until late 2010, which was a total non-starter for many/most production uses

Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#124

Post by kylequest »

jclem wrote: post #78
natural219 wrote: post #41

I hate PostgreSQL. Yes, I am a dummy application developer who doesn't understand database software. Every time I try to install PostgreSQL it fails. Every time I install MySQL it installs successfully with no problems. Actually, that's the extent of my experience with it, and I guess I'm fine dealing with a database that doesn't validate date formats strictly if I can use the damn database without hassle . I am tota…

+1 using Postgres.app (for Mac): http://postgresapp.com/ If you're on a Mac and don't want a menubar icon (I decided this recently), `brew install postgres`, and then write yourself some functions to make starting and stopping easier: https://github.com/jclem/dotfiles/blob/master/zsh/functions/... https://github.com/jclem/dotfiles/blob/master/zsh/functions/...

EnterpriseDB has a nice set of PostgreSQL installers for all platforms. It also bundles PgAdmin 3 if you need a GUI. It's not as hip as PG Commander, but it's a real client that can do pretty much anything (vs PG Commander where you can't even create a new db instance).

Postgres.app is nice when it works. When you install the latest version the psql tool it bundles and exposes in the menu assumes you have a db that matches your user name, which, of course, doesn't exist, so you can't connect to the Postgres :-)

It also doesn't work that great if you already have another version setup running on the default port.

Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#125

Post by chc »

nerfhammer wrote: post #121
chc wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I would really say Postgres won. Among people who care about databases, Postgres has always been the more popular of the big two free databases. Postgres was actually dedicated to being a good relational database, whereas MySQL in its earlier days was willing to cut corners to the point where it wasn't even ACID in most common configurations. But MySQL was faster (because, again, cutting corners) and…

don't forget postgres didn't officially support replication until late 2010, which was a total non-starter for many/most production uses

Yeah, I think that was the big hurdle that finally made Postgres acceptable to people and started the wave of switchers.

Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#127

Post by gtaylor »

nphase wrote: post #111
jes5199 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some engineers I worked with went and interviewed people at various San Francisco startups about their experiences with their databases. The MySQL startups tended to say "We love MySQL. We've gotten in the habit of taking an hour or two of downtime in the middle of the night every week to run all of our schema migrations, and we've had to build our process around that, but one we had it in place, everything's been fi…

Which tools enable real-time schema migrations in Pg?

CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY, ALTER, and others. Batteries included.

This has saved our bacon a number of times. The only kind of DB-related downtime we have is when we're doing a Postgres upgrade.

Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#128

Post by gtaylor »

nerfhammer wrote: post #121
chc wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I would really say Postgres won. Among people who care about databases, Postgres has always been the more popular of the big two free databases. Postgres was actually dedicated to being a good relational database, whereas MySQL in its earlier days was willing to cut corners to the point where it wasn't even ACID in most common configurations. But MySQL was faster (because, again, cutting corners) and…

don't forget postgres didn't officially support replication until late 2010, which was a total non-starter for many/most production uses

It is a bit surprising how long it took for that to land. On the plus side, replication is very easy and low latency with 9.3.

There's still a bit to do on the auto-failover front, but that may end up being more of a third party undertaking. Postgres has failover facilities included, they just have to be driven by something external right now.

Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#129

Post by fat0wl »

fat0wl wrote: post #105
adrianh wrote: post #4

This is HUGE! I'm using the AWS stack for http://www.soundslice.com/ and I've been using MySQL instead of Postgres, purely because my hatred for MySQL is less than my hatred for being a sysadmin. It was a tradeoff, and I miss Postgres dearly every time I use MySQL. This new Amazon offering solves that. I wrote a little more about my AWS setup here: http://www.holovaty.com/writing/aws-notes/

Yea I was using MySQL on RDS just to escape the Heroku monolith. Funny that Heroku announced a new Postgres pricing model that is VERY expensive compared to old setup ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6712570 ) just in time to be wiped off the map by RDS.

hey who downvoted this without replying?!

Last time I badmouthed Heroku on here I got a reply from one of their employees asking me to fill out support tickets for errors I was getting in their apps......

O_o they're watching.

Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#130

Post by rabidonrails »

adrianh wrote: post #98
pc86 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me just say that I absolutely love soundslice. It's a great application!

Thanks! And it'll be even better once I migrate to Postgres. :-)

Wow, Soundslice looks amazing! Excited to play around with it.
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