[thelist] MySQL vs PostgreSQL - Opinions Please

[Andrew Forsberg]

>Can't comment on PostgreSQL, since I haven't worked on it. But, I 
>can say a few things about mySQL.

Ditto!

>First of all, its free (yay). Oracle -- I don't think so.

I don't use CF either, but price is not the reason why. Oracle's a 
big, wide, deep pool, and, TBH, the extensive list of features look 
lovely but entirely irrelevant to my daily work. MySQL has an 
entirely different target developer / admin audience.

>Since its open source, you are free to mess with it to your heart's 
>content. Also, I like that it has a web based admin available 
>(phpMyAdmin).

That piece of software rocks, and make sure you're using the latest 
version. They have a full time dev team working on it now and it rips 
my nighty! Mmmmm -- table optimization at a mouse click! 
Fragmentation / file size specs where you need them. Create BDB 
tables (if your build supports them). No more ENUM / SET traumas.

>What I don't like is that there is no stored procedure option 
>(atleast none that I can think of). Oracle really wins out on this 
>one.

http://www.mysql.com/doc/N/u/Nutshell_4.1_development_release.html

Looks like stored procedures, foreign key integrity, and nested 
queries are just around the corner. Dec / Jan even! And 4.0 may well 
be assigned beta this month too. Excellent!

Bottom line, AFAICS, is that mysql tends towards the feature-light 
side (relatively speaking) emphasizing speed, reliability, and 
load-predictability, while postgresql is more or less the inverse. 
Tim Perdue did a write up a while back on phpbuilder.com:

http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim20000705.php3?page=1

Best of luck
Andrew
-- 
Andrew Forsberg
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