>> So when you talk about focusing on usablility improvements you mean
>> that priority should be given to supporting MySQL-specific syntax
>> extensions and ensuring that there are no queries where the MySQL
>> optimizer comes up with a more efficient plan than PostgreSQL?
Well, I'd be interested in this just because I *always* want to improve
the optimizer. I think these cases demonstrate places we could improve
our optimizer still further, just as looking for the same cases with
Oracle or SQL Server does.
> Yes. PostgreSQL should be able to run MySQL code quoted here:
>
> This is a prerequisite for people to be willing to test and adopt
> PostgreSQL. People are not willing to debug frameworks like Drupal and
> port them to PostgreSQL. We are quite alone and lost.
First, off, the evidence is against that; people are doing the work to
port things. And creating new projects which are based on Postgres.
Second, we're not going to support MySQL's *bugs* and *bad design
decisions* which is what lazy developers actually want; they want
something exactly the same as MySQL, including bugs. If they want that,
they can use MySQL. We are not MySQL, and trying to out-MySQL MySQL is
stupid, just as it would be to copy Oracle exactly.
Now, there are things which MySQL does better which we should fix,
because they are real problems for our users who already like
PostgreSQL. These include simple replication, upgrade in place, driver
maintenance, covering indexes, MERGE, etc. But we'll do these because
they make *Postgres* better, not because MySQL has them.
--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
www.pgexperts.com