
MySQL vs PostgreSQL - chaostheory
http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/MySQL_vs_PostgreSQL
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jhancock
I've read many MySQL vs Postgres articles/papers over the years. This one is
the best. Not highly opinionated. "Just the facts" mostly. And in a good
format. Thanks for publishing!!!

oh yeah, go postgres!!! ;)

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iamelgringo
Great comparison of the most recent features and versions. It's nice to see
PostGres get some kudos in the speed department. And, it's nice to hear about
the upcoming developments of the Falcon and Maria engines.

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olefoo
If you're in Portland this weekend and want to learn something about Postgres
then you should attend <http://pgcon.us/> Postgres West.

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st3fan
We switched from MySQL to PG when mysql suddenly returned different results in
a unit test when we upgraded to a newer minor version. Never looked back.

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jamongkad
OTOH I was thinking about moving my app from MySQL to SQLite. Did anyone else
has gone through the same situation?

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ashleyw
That is a bad idea I think — SQLite locks the database while inserting data,
obviously this is bad for a big application. I don't think it was designed for
web apps with possibly hundreds of queries a second.

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ash
You are right. But "hundreds of queries a second" are fine if there're mostly
_read_ queries.

<http://www.sqlite.org/faq.html#q5>

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ashleyw
Yeh I should have mentioned the times I've used SQLite was early in
development, or one time when I created a script which would pump tons of data
into the database in threads, which resulted in errors and missing data. I'm
sure I could have added better error exceptions and keep retrying, but if you
translate that to a multi-user app, thats just not going to cut it. A quick
change to MySQL fixed it. :)

I do like SQLite, just not for anything where you cant control the writes per
second, or need it to be high.

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dazzawazza
This is very useful (although I am not qualified to say if it's definitive or
not). I chose PostgreSQL based on one single fact that I ONCE crashed a MySQL
server with a query (about 4 years ago) and I've never crashed PostgreSQL.

It's a flimsy reason tbh but it's all I had to go on. Having said all that I
do really love PostgreSQL now after 4 years of using it (via SQLAlchemy).

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rbanffy
I tend to chose PostgreSQL because of the query language. It is more
comfortable to program in.

As ORMs become more prevalent, things like query language start to become less
relevant, but so do relational databases. I really don't care how my data is
stored, as long as it's safe and performs well.

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tdavis
ORMs are a case of "good enough for most," however, I have seen ridiculously
dramatic increases in performance when dealing with millions of DB rows by
using SQL and stored procedures. By design, it's pretty much impossible for an
ORM to ever reach such levels of performance since they need to be generic
enough to work across various RDMS systems and so forth.

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Maascamp
My preferred DBMS is Postgres, but I have to use MySQL at work. I can honestly
say that moving to MySQL after Postgres is a serious downer. What happens when
you want referential integrity alongside fulltext indexes? An ugly database.

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joestrickler
I don't understand why MySQL has 9 different storage engines.

Would someone mind quickly posting the benefits of that architecture as
opposed to focusing on one 'storage engine' and making it really good?

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cbrinker
Well, I pose to you this question:

Would you rather have 1 type of car that the government makes that works
pretty reliably and is a middle-ground car, or would you rather have a
selection of cars to chose from; sports, truck, sedan, minivan, etc. ?

Everyone has different needs. I use MySQL extensively for it's memory-based
storage engine, MyISAM for quick & dirty non-escential data i/o, and InnoDB
for when data needs to be managed securely for processes.

I would use PG for transaction-based data processing in a high-volume
situation with multi-processing clusters. Otherwise MySQL works fantastic for
all my needs.

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samuel
The flexibility is great, but only if grouped with consistency. No foreign
keys on MyISAM but yes on InnoDB? Thanks but no, thanks.

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thwarted
No disk backed storage with heap tables but yes on InnoDB? Thanks but no,
thanks.

Uh, the definition of flexibility is lack of consistency between the options.
Otherwise, it's a false choice.

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rbanffy
Flamewar in 3... 2... 1...

Oh... This is not Slashdot. Sorry.

