
Ask HN: Database migration project – which database? - laxentasken
Hi! I&#x27;m tasked with migrating a existing db project from a proprietary database to &quot;a better solution&quot; as the current one is becoming quite unstable due to various bugs and the fact that it reached EOL years ago.<p>The workflow is pretty simple: mass update existing records or appending new records once in a while (this will be done in a controlled fashion invoked by someone - no services) -&gt; do some ETL work -&gt; re-build existing tables from source after doing some join magic -&gt; export tables for delivery to customers.<p>Tables have around 10 to 100 million rows and 10 to 300 fields (will probably normalize a bit..) The data is relational and as for now the size is ~400GB which I expect to grow around 3% each time. There wont be much reads as the tables will be exported for further process and the the writes will be in a controlled fashion as stated above.<p>I&#x27;m looking at mysql and postgresql - which one would you choose? Or something else?
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davelnewton
It also depends on how the DB is used: read or write heavy? Is the data
relational? How much? How do you need to query the data? Etc.

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laxentasken
Updated with "The data is relational and as for now the size is ~400GB which I
expect to grow around 3% each time. There wont be much reads as the tables
will be exported for further process and the the writes will be in a
controlled fashion as stated above."

Queries will only be done as spot checks to ensure correctness.

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moviuro
postgrsql's future is pretty safe, whereas MariaDB/MySQL was pretty worrying
for a while.

pgsql is closer to the (SQL) standard and has a rock-solid track record.

However, given the size of your project, you might want to test both in "real"
conditions, see which ones work correctly. You should perhaps even call for a
contractor.

