I've just accepted a position at a company where MySQL is the database
of choice. They are running ~sixty MySQL instances, and I am beginning
to learn MySQL. My general inclination, being as I've been using
PostgreSQL for a number of years, is to recommend switching to
PostgreSQL (and they are at a point where switching is a viable option),
but I don't want to start recommending if:
1. MySQL really is best for them, or
2. PostgreSQL is better, but don't know why.
For whatever reason, the various MSvs.PG comparisons I've found have
fallen quite short in accuracy, timeliness, or objectiveness. I've made
my own updateable version at:
http://faemalia.org/wiki/view/Technical/PostgreSQLvsMySQL.
I wouldn't mind having calm, rational individuals go change that page
all around. It is flawed and incomplete, but is read/write.
I want to have a (flame-free as possible) discussion of relative merits
to both systems. I know I'm not the only one interested in these
comparisons.
The key issues I wonder about are:
1. Replication -- Supposedly Postgres-R was to be merged into 7.2?
Did this happen? Is the pgsql.com offering still the only game
in town? (pgsql.com was down at the time I wrote this)
2. Read/write backups -- Supposedly MySQL locks tables into read-only
mode while backing them up?
3. Non-logged bulk inserts -- How much logging does COPY table FROM
do? Is it comparable to a MySQL MyISAM table?
4. Point-in-time recovery -- Was this supposed to go into CVS sometime
this month?
--
Tim Ellis
Senior Database Architect and author, tedia2sql (http://tedia2sql.tigris.org)
If this helped you, http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=philovivero