On Friday 21 January 2005 21:28, Paul wrote:
On Fri, 2005-01-21 at 15:39 -0600, Benjamin J. Weiss wrote:
I'm beginning to wonder whether PostgresSQL wouldn't be the better solution...
I've thought it is ... the only reason to prefer MySQL in the past has been better read performance. By every other metric I've felt that PostgresSQL is a "better" database and have wondered why everybody was using MySQL for everything. The only reason I can think of is the "network effect" which is one of the reasons Windows is popular (everybody knows somebody that knows it).
Actually, you guys should be a little nicer to mysql... :-) I have one app where it outperformes everything else I tested - db2, oracle, postgres and sybase - by at least 1 to 10... Reason? The mysql binary pretty much fit into the cache of the cpu... plus the app was read heavy, a area that mysql shines in.
Anyway, I would be careful with statements like "x is better than y because it supports feature z" - that's not a "better" its a "more fitting for...". Yes, Mysql doesn't support some/many features that other database engines have - but there is a large set of appliations where you'll be hard pressed to find something that beats mysql. Its simply an issue of selecting the tool that fits best into your environment.
Peter.