Thomas Finneid wrote:
>
> I am researching an advocation paper on Postgres. Basically I would like
> to make a list of the most important strengths and weaknesses of
> Postgres compared to a couple of other major databases.
>
> The aim is to have a factual technical background for when advocating
> Postgres to potential users.
My Tech Talk at HP last year had a bunch of this:
https://fossbazaar.org/content/josh-berkus-two-great-open-source-databases-comparison-2008-06-26
I will say overall, that a *real* comparison of appropriateness of
various databases will have to be painfully detailed. I was asked at
Sun to do a breakdown of "when should we recommend" just for Postgres,
MySQL, Derby and Oracle; I wouldn't want to do the whole field. And
don't forget that there's a whole new ball game of specialty databases
these days, including (but not limited to):
DW/BI databases:
Greenplum
Netezza
Aster
Paraccel
LucidDB
etc.
Object/Multivalue DBs:
DB4O
Cache
CouchDB
Embedded DBs
HSQLDB
Derby
SQLite
Others
Hypertable
Memcached
Also, when you compare "MySQL" you have to treat each storage engine
really as a separate database for comparison purposes; they don't behave
the same, and usually migration between table types is very difficult.
I hope you have a year for this project!
--Josh Berkus