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Is MySQL becoming less open source? Test cases go internal now

blog.mariadb.org

21–30 of 43 posts

Re: Is MySQL becoming less open source? Test cases go internal now

#21
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MySQL is as popular as it is because EVERYONE is using it. Which means that all of the really hard scalability and management problems have already been solved every which way. And all available for free by companies you know and trust e.g. Facebook, Twitter. If I were looking to become a DBA today I wouldn't bother with PostgreSQL at all. I would learn all of the NoSQL databases because that is where all of the inte…

dba and nosql? sounds strange. note that scalability is not everything.

It's strange a DBA managing a database ?

And you're right. Scalability isn't everything hence the popularity of NoSQL which are far more developer friendly than current SQL databases. And in most companies it is the development teams that dictate technology choices.

Re: Is MySQL becoming less open source? Test cases go internal now

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MySQL is as popular as it is because EVERYONE is using it. Which means that all of the really hard scalability and management problems have already been solved every which way. And all available for free by companies you know and trust e.g. Facebook, Twitter. If I were looking to become a DBA today I wouldn't bother with PostgreSQL at all. I would learn all of the NoSQL databases because that is where all of the inte…

Or you could, you know, learn multiple things, because very few companies that need scalability are best served by doing everything in only one technology. Or, for that matter, hiring people who only know one technology. There's a hell of a lot of useful stuff to learn (practical and theoretical) from relational databases. NoSQL has some useful ideas too. However, advocating that someone wanting to be considered a "d…

Funny that you chose to reply to me instead of the parent. Learning just PostgreSQL is also poor advice.

Most DBAs will already know Oracle and MySQL and my point was that they would be much better advised learning a NoSQL database. Of course if you're a new DBA you should learn a relational database I just fail to see why on earth anybody would recommend PostgreSQL over Oracle/MySQL which are far, far, more popular.

Re: Is MySQL becoming less open source? Test cases go internal now

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could, you know, learn multiple things, because very few companies that need scalability are best served by doing everything in only one technology. Or, for that matter, hiring people who only know one technology. There's a hell of a lot of useful stuff to learn (practical and theoretical) from relational databases. NoSQL has some useful ideas too. However, advocating that someone wanting to be considered a "d…

Funny that you chose to reply to me instead of the parent. Learning just PostgreSQL is also poor advice. Most DBAs will already know Oracle and MySQL and my point was that they would be much better advised learning a NoSQL database. Of course if you're a new DBA you should learn a relational database I just fail to see why on earth anybody would recommend PostgreSQL over Oracle/MySQL which are far, far, more popular.

"If I were looking to become a DBA today I wouldn't bother with PostgreSQL at all. I would learn all of the NoSQL databases because that is where all of the interest is right now."

That's what I was responding to. "looking to become a DBA" does not remotely imply someone who already "knows" Oracle and MySQL.

Re: Is MySQL becoming less open source? Test cases go internal now

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could, you know, learn multiple things, because very few companies that need scalability are best served by doing everything in only one technology. Or, for that matter, hiring people who only know one technology. There's a hell of a lot of useful stuff to learn (practical and theoretical) from relational databases. NoSQL has some useful ideas too. However, advocating that someone wanting to be considered a "d…

Funny that you chose to reply to me instead of the parent. Learning just PostgreSQL is also poor advice. Most DBAs will already know Oracle and MySQL and my point was that they would be much better advised learning a NoSQL database. Of course if you're a new DBA you should learn a relational database I just fail to see why on earth anybody would recommend PostgreSQL over Oracle/MySQL which are far, far, more popular.

Oracle might be popular, but few places can afford, or justify paying for it. MySQL is mostly popular because everyone was busy cargo culting based on what Facebook and YouTube were doing instead of evaluating the choices on their merits. Luckily most of those people have moved on to cargo culting NoSQL choices.

If you want a solid open-source database, especially one that has a future, learn Postgres.

Re: Is MySQL becoming less open source? Test cases go internal now

#25
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MariaDB is the free (GPL) branch (actually more of a fork at this point) created by Monty, the primary original author of MySQL.

Is anyone actually using MariaDB in production at a reasonable scale? Our DBAs tried to convince us to switch from MySQL to Maria a few months ago. All of the devs on my team looked around and couldn't find any testimonials, use-cases or benchmarks that weren't done by someone on the Maria dev team. I realize Monty is behind it but I don't really feel like being an early adopter based on fear that some day Oracle mig…

I use MariaDB on all of my websites these days, the largest of which tops out at around 5K queries a second. The biggest draw for me was the XtraDB engine (which is also found in Percona Server) which is a replacement for InnoDB. XtraDB performs much better on SSDs and I was able to get over 50% performance gains on some queries with the default settings. This may or may not be applicable to your specific environment, but it is a drop-in replacement so it's very easy to just install it on a test box and stress test it with your current code.

Re: Is MySQL becoming less open source? Test cases go internal now

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny that you chose to reply to me instead of the parent. Learning just PostgreSQL is also poor advice. Most DBAs will already know Oracle and MySQL and my point was that they would be much better advised learning a NoSQL database. Of course if you're a new DBA you should learn a relational database I just fail to see why on earth anybody would recommend PostgreSQL over Oracle/MySQL which are far, far, more popular.

Oracle might be popular, but few places can afford, or justify paying for it. MySQL is mostly popular because everyone was busy cargo culting based on what Facebook and YouTube were doing instead of evaluating the choices on their merits. Luckily most of those people have moved on to cargo culting NoSQL choices. If you want a solid open-source database, especially one that has a future, learn Postgres.

I love armchair experts.

So I guess if all of those clueless engineers at the world's most trafficked websites would have just listened to you they would never have picked MySQL. Have you ever thought of letting them know that they should switch over to PostgreSQL ?

Re: Is MySQL becoming less open source? Test cases go internal now

#27
post #2

So basically, the Java strategy. Killing the alternatives through creating compatibility uncertainty. Oh, man. This doesn't bode well. I hope this drives developers towards using and improving Postgres, but, well, who knows. One can dream! More likely is that it may drive people towards Percona, which I have on good word is a solid professional MySQL branch...or, like Java, people will just stick with the brand. :/ E…

I would think one would need to look no further than the Oracle/Google lawsuit and its outcome with respect to Java to see how Oracle will move forward with MySQL.

Re: Is MySQL becoming less open source? Test cases go internal now

#28
post #6
post #2

So basically, the Java strategy. Killing the alternatives through creating compatibility uncertainty. Oh, man. This doesn't bode well. I hope this drives developers towards using and improving Postgres, but, well, who knows. One can dream! More likely is that it may drive people towards Percona, which I have on good word is a solid professional MySQL branch...or, like Java, people will just stick with the brand. :/ E…

For the majority of developers, it's whatever database server that control panels like cPanel and Plesk choose, and they aren't the sort to switch on a whim.

For anyone interested: cPanel doesn't officially support PgSQL, and Plesk charges $6-15/mo for their "Power Pack" addon which adds PgSQL support.

Re: Is MySQL becoming less open source? Test cases go internal now

#29
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MariaDB is the free (GPL) branch (actually more of a fork at this point) created by Monty, the primary original author of MySQL.

Is anyone actually using MariaDB in production at a reasonable scale? Our DBAs tried to convince us to switch from MySQL to Maria a few months ago. All of the devs on my team looked around and couldn't find any testimonials, use-cases or benchmarks that weren't done by someone on the Maria dev team. I realize Monty is behind it but I don't really feel like being an early adopter based on fear that some day Oracle mig…

I've been using it in production as the primary datastore on a news website with fairly high traffic (10 million+ monthly uniques, 1000s of queries per second). Have not encountered any issues since switching to MariaDB over a year ago. Monty's organization places a high value on well tested and stable releases.

Re: Is MySQL becoming less open source? Test cases go internal now

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle might be popular, but few places can afford, or justify paying for it. MySQL is mostly popular because everyone was busy cargo culting based on what Facebook and YouTube were doing instead of evaluating the choices on their merits. Luckily most of those people have moved on to cargo culting NoSQL choices. If you want a solid open-source database, especially one that has a future, learn Postgres.

I love armchair experts. So I guess if all of those clueless engineers at the world's most trafficked websites would have just listened to you they would never have picked MySQL. Have you ever thought of letting them know that they should switch over to PostgreSQL ?

The engineers and Facebook might have selected MySQL on merits. Or they might be stuck with trying to do the best with legacy choices. I don't know what the best solution is for them today, and it might not be either Postgres or MySQL.

If however you need to make a choice today for what database to use on a new project, then you should evaluate the choices instead of basing your decision on what might have been best for Facebook 8 years ago.

I'm not going to get into the technical differences here, because even if MySQL and Postgres were technically equivalent (and they aren't but I'll let you do your own research), I simply don't trust Oracle with the future of MySQL.

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