Raymond Chui writes:
> I am wonder why most of people choose MySQL in Linux
> world rather than PostgreSQL?
I've bounced between a couple of different DBMS over
the last year, and I have some pretty straightforward
ideas about the relative strengths of the ones I've
worked with:
Oracle:
Plus: complete, fast, reliable
Minus: expensive and a PITA to install and administer
MySQL:
Plus: lightweight, easy to administer, very fast
with simple queries/updates
Minus: slow with a mix of complex queries and updates,
incomplete SQL support.
PostgreSQL:
Plus: more complete than MySQL, good performance
under a variety of situations
Minus: no BLOBs (soon to be rectified, I understand),
version upgrades require dump/reload.
For most basic web applications, each page needs to be
generated very quickly, which rules out complex queries
and/or updates under almost any engine. That puts
PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Oracle on a pretty even footing
feature-wise. MySQL's speed, PostgreSQL's row size limits,
and Oracle's expense make MySQL the best choice for a lot
of simple web applications.
As a previous poster pointed out, a couple of years
ago, a lot of folks were using Berkeley DB as their
storage mechanism; watching those people move to
_any_ relational database is a good sign. As the
larger population of people working on server-side
systems learns more about relational databases,
they'll outgrow MySQL at some point as well.
Of course, the MySQL developers aren't sitting still;
if they continue to improve MySQL to meet their
user's needs, then in a few years, MySQL could be
just as complete as PostgreSQL.
- Tim