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Actually, MySQL *has* sort of been pirated.

NuSphere even filed a complaint against MySQL's creator for breach of contract, after violating the (GPL) licensing agreement themselves.

I bought this book thinking it would be a great resource for an administrator using MySQL in a production environment - My mistake. It is true that MySQL is in use by a lot of large businesses and websites, but this book does not cover issues relevant to those implementations. If you are a programmer (even a very inexperienced one) and want to learn more about using MySQL, buy this book. If you have experience with MySQL and are thinking about using it in a heavy traffic production application, this book is useless to you. Stick to the docs on the MySQL site.

Wel, I like your two (especially, the one about the monitor being nicer -- I hate PostgreSQL's CLI). There are more advantages:

• Code might be more mature. Early versions of psql suffered a bit. MySQL has been looked at a lot, has a large install base, etc., so it's got more kinks worked out. Probably. YMMV.
• Access control is more fine grained. I'm very used to MySQL's grant tables. You can get nearly the same thing in psql though.
• Windows support. You need Cygwin for psql on Windows. This isn't a biggie for me, but might be important to some...
• I can back up MySQL's DB files really easily, without the DB running if need be (did this once as an emergency backup and it saved my bacon).
• Lots of books, lots of code already written for MySQL. Although I suspect that psql will close that gap. But 8 times out of ten you see something from freshmeat written for MySQL.
• I'm personally more familiar with it... :-)

Anyway, there's a whole list of pros as well as cons over at MySQL's site. However, that list let out the most important thing to consider when choosing any technology: Is it the right tool for the job? Most of the time MySQL has been just fine for my needs.

-B

[You need a commercial license if...] You have a commercial application that ONLY works with MySQL and ships the application with the MySQL server. This is because we view this as linking even if it is done over the network.

For those who use MySQL or other database systems with PHP, I highly recommend using the ADOdb Database Library for PHP. It's feature-rich, robust, and has a smaller and smaller footprint with nearly every successive version. I use it all over the place, and it's very very handy. Sure, there are other abstraction libraries out there, but this one takes the cake, IMO. Check out all the supported database drivers!

A great cross-platform GUI is MyCC, available at www.mysql.com. It's pretty stable and has friendly stuff like inline editing. Not all that mature, but worth a look. It's what I use :).

This article isn't about MYSQL, it's about a book about MySQL.

Stored procedures are terribly simple to implement in whatever's driving your database, so there's really no point in bloating MySQL with them.

If you're going to point out the lack of transaction support, have a look at this.

If you're just going for early post E-Z Karma, well done.

MySQL does offer support if you wish to pay for it. It even comes in two forms, standard and advanced.

PHP support is also available from Zend, and some is even included when you purchase one of their products.

It may not be one unified source, but if you're using Oracle software, you wouldn't expect MS to support it would you?

MySQL does offer support if you wish to pay for it. It even comes in two forms, standard and advanced.

PHP support is also available from Zend, and some is even included when you purchase one of their products.

It may not be one unified source, but if you're using Oracle software, you wouldn't expect MS to support it would you?

Nothing better than the internet. My favorite is devshed. They have great forums if you're looking for help in just about any IT topic. There is also PHP documentation and Mysql documentation.

Good point because of this: Postgres has referential integrity, mySQL has not.

Full-text queries can only be done on four or more letter words.

You're just making that up, jackass. There is no limit to how short the text is that you query for.

MySQL uses a very simple parser to split text into words. A ``word'' is any sequence of characters consisting of letters, numbers, `'', and `_'. Any ``word'' that is present in the stopword list or is just too short (3 characters or less) is ignored.

You're just making that up, jackass. There is no limit to how short the text is that you query for.

This limitation has little to do with MySQL (besides general poor performance) and everything to do with SlashCode's poorly designed searching facilities.

MySQL has transactions and row-level locking when you use InnoDB under MySQL (which I believe Slashdot does now). Sub-selects are supposed to be in 4.1 I believe.

As for bigger name "serious business" sites, Yahoo! Finance uses MySQL.

In addition there is nothing to prevent the government or any other agency to negotiate a different licence with the copyright holder (although this may be difficult for collaborative projects.) From the GPL FAQ:

The GNU GPL does not give users permission to attach other licenses to the program. But the copyright holder for a program can release it under several different licenses in parallel. One of them may be the GNU GPL.

For example MySQL is more than happy to sell a non-GPL license for a closed-source application along with the GPL license.

free alternatives

Nah, it only took me 5 seconds - it's here

Most lemmon laws state that products sold to customers must be of a certain minimum quality. This would not impact OSS development projects because they do not sell products or product licenses (live treditional software vendors do). Most OSS organizations that seek to proffit directly from the software being written, tend to sell support contracts. A typical example of this is MySQL AB. It's reasonable to assume that any software lemmon law would contain language similar to lemmon laws relating to other products. This language is usually limited to products sold to a customer, so, again, OSS development activities would not be affected, however anyone seeking to sell softare - typically those with business models tied to BSD style licenses - will probably be impacted and will have to shift to the service and support model of outfits like Redhat. Zealots like Stallman and ESR whould be thrilled by this.

On the other hand the Microsoft lobying machine should be in full force, makind the entirely inane argument that "If this legislation is going to screw us over it should screw over OSS as well". We can only hope that legislators will be able to see through such arguments.

--CTH

Well, offhand I'd say one of the following:

MySQL

PostgreSQL

RHDB

yes, PHP support is still lacking a bit from our beloved OS X...

here are some links on the subject that may be of some interest:

http://developer.apple.com/internet/macosx/php.htm l - Apple's PHP page where they "admit" that...

Like all Unix variants, Mac OS X has it quirks. It is also a young OS, and not all Open Source or Unix software projects have had time to test their programs on the Mac and make the necessary alterations

Linked from that last page is http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/php/ - a site concerning a prebuilt PHP Apache module for OS X... they are working on the 4.2.0 version and I don't have a doubt that these folks will deliver...!

Installing pre-compiled MySQL, PHP and Graphviz packages on a OS X-running powerbook was a great (and quick!...) experience. May everybody taste the sweet pleasure of writing PHP code on their balcony! :-)

Greg

Oracle has a similar tool to analyze queries and see where additional indexes may be helpful or where existing ones aren't used. PostgreSQL doesn't have anything to gather information on all queries executed recently, but you can gather information on a particular query with the usual "explain <statement>" to see the query execution plan, and its own "explain analyze <statement>" to see the query plan against an actual execution.

I dont have performance benchmarks, but for me, SQLServer has an overwhelming number of tools and works, very very well. In my experience, that there can be an entire job title called "Oracle DBA", speaks volumes about how easy it is to administer.

I assert that, for the most part, Oracle's incredible number of tools are why there's an entire job title called "Oracle DBA". Even if the tools are easy to use, the sheer volume means there's a huge time investment in learning them all. (I'm of the opinion that adding more tools rarely allows you to get away with less knowledge if you want to do something well - it just makes particularly tedious tasks faster once you have a little more knowledge.) So if MS SQL Server has anywhere near its number, I find it hard to believe it's easier than Oracle to administer well.

MySQL is an interesting one. It really is designed for a different purpose, to be a fast, file based database. It really can't cope with the mission critical type installations, but is excellent in its domain.

I disagree. ACID features don't make PostgreSQL any more difficult to use. Performance-wise, I've not seen any conclusive benchmarks that MySQL is faster in realistic situations. (The benchmarks on mysql.com reveal a complete lack of understanding of performance. They are benchmarking things like creating tables. How often do you do that?) Or that performance is ever much more important than massively decreasing the chance of data corruption. How is MySQL better than PostgreSQL for the problem domain you mentioned?

I have to agree with part of the original statement, that advocating using MySQL would hurt his credibility. But PostgreSQL is a good database - I think it's better than Oracle in many situations, and MS SQL Server strikes me as an Oracle wannabe. You haven't convinced me otherwise.

That about sums it up. Most corporations are not in the software business; they have IT staff, but not programming and development staff....just guys that maintain and secure the servers and networks.

Most corporations are not in the car business, still I prefer to have a choice who can fix my car. You know how expensive are even the simplest things in brand authorized car service companies, now only imagine how much more expensive would it be if you were not even allowed to fix your car anywhere else.

These guys aren't going to desk-check all the code for buffer overflows and the like, they just want to install it, configure it, and apply security patches that the software developers wrote.

That's funny, because that's exactly what I do with my Debian boxes. Well, almost. I install them, configure, and I don't apply security patches, I just run apt-get upgrade.

Don't fool yourself, you don't have to check for buffer overflows when you use Debian and you don't have to check for buffer overflows when you use Windows (well, you can't anyway, so let's just say you don't have to). The difference is when you want to customize the software.

To customize IIS you have to hire Microsoft (good luck with that). To customize Apache you can hire someone from The Apache Software Foundation, you can hire someone from Apache Support Webring, you can hire someone from Covalent Technologies, Red Hat, Thawte, Dana Point Communications, or you can hire me - as we all have the source, we all know the internal API and we all have a right to customize Apache.

You can even use one of your guys that maintain and secure the servers and networks if the customizations you need are easy enough. Remember how Apache httpd internals are deigned. The most fancy customization is usually just a simple mod_perl module.

The same is with ASP versus Perl, MS-SQL versus MySQL, MSVC++ versus GCC, et cetera. Using free software is smarter from the business standpoint than using proprietary software, it's only the transition that's difficult, once you've got into the mess of proprietary file formats, protocols and "standards".

The price of Access looks small when you compare it to a real database.

How do you figure?

Access License: $250.00

MySQL License: FREE

PostgreSQL License: FREE

SAP DB License: FREE

Firebird License: FREE

If you ask me GNU Applications and a few other programs are the killer apps for GNU/Linux as a CS student.

1. GCC, Binutils, Emacs/Vim (General Hacking)

2. Mesa (Graphics)

3. Bison/Flex (Compilers)

4. Linux (Operating Systems)

5. Various Packet Analyizers (Networking/Security)

5. MySQL/Postgres (Databases)

The only non opensource application I use is Mathematica, but Wolfram provides student discouts and packages such as Combinatorica are opensource.

Unfortunately MySQL crying about GPL violation is weakened by their apparent failure to understand the GPL with respect to linking. Their license terms say that a client program linked with their LGPL client library which talks to a separate (GPL) MySQL server is effectively linking with GPL code, and therefore your client should also be under the GPL. (see bullet point 2.) The FSF's interpretation of the GPL has clearly shown that they believe IPC between separate address spaces is not linking under the GPL; this is the only reasonable interpretation, since there's no single file which contains both your client code and GPL code (and "mere aggregation" doesn't count). Of course, its up to MySQL AB to adopt whatever interpretation of the GPL they like, and if they choose to use their interpretation to sue someone, they are free to do so. But they won't get much support, and probably won't win; in doing so, they may weaken the GPL. (And no, this has nothing to do with NuSphere; their case is much more obviously GPL violation that everyone can agree with.)

Boston, Massachusetts, USA - Friday, March, 1, 2002 - In a decision handed down today in Boston, US District Judge Patti B. Saris ruled on the preliminary injunction motion in MySQL AB vs. Progress Software Corp.

Too bad that they are fighting in court against MySQL, I really liked ProgreSQL...

The press release does not have much info on what the suit is actually about. Here are some links to explain the dispute:

• MySQL FAQ about the dispute
• Eben Moglen's affidavit, which very clearly lays out MySQL's side of things

I couldn't find any propaganda on the Nusphere site. I guess they're downplaying the story.

It looks like they got it back from NuSphere, the article just failed to mention that. Here, and here, and a Google search for more.

It looks like they got it back from NuSphere, the article just failed to mention that. Here, and here, and a Google search for more.

Fair enough.

However, Yahoo is not a typical business. As the Yahoo article says, "Finance managed its database needs through homegrown flat files and Berkeley DB databases. But those solutions proved to be inflexible and not scalable enough for their needs..."
Homebrew flat files will be wooped by any decent DB server, especially a blazing fast one like MySQL, any day of the week. Yahoo also tends to embrace open source and new technologies more readily. Most of their servers, for example, run FreeBSD and have since the beginning.
This is a slightly bad example considering that FreeBSD is unquestionably a product that you can trust your mission critical data to, but it illustrates to a degree the type of company that Yahoo is.

I, myself, would trust MySQL with anything that didn't matter to someone else. In the end--it's politics, and "nobody ever got fired for using an ACID compliant database." ;-)

One of the nice features of MySQL is the capability of having pluggable persistence managers. An example of that is the default, MyISAM, which you are correct in saying does not support ACID. But with the release of MySQL-Max, which happened awhileago(tm), and MySQL v4 out of the box, support for 3 additional backends was added, BerkelyDB, Gemini, and InnoDB, all of which have complete ACID support. InnoDB also supports row level locking and even an initial implementation of foreign keys.

InnoDb is is in use here at Slashdot as well as a good deal of other sites demanding high-transaction throughput with full ACID support.

With the addition of foreign keys and stored procedures functionality, all of which are on the slate for the 4.x series, the reasons not to use MySQL are lessening every day.

Side note: Yeah, I know Gemini is the red-haired stepchild of the MySQL world. It's still a decent table manager.

There are good reasons for putting data in a conventional server-based SQL database, but there's also good reasons not to. There are a number of cases where another application (and even the database server itself) has no business accessing or potentially modifying the data. It's for things like this that I would like to have such an embeded version. For example, if I'm making a mail server, or something, perhaps bad things can happen if the data is not updated in a particular way, I don't want just any old app making changes, obviously. It also helps reduce namespace conflicts between programs, and so on.

I hope they hold a naming competition too!

Did everyone forget that one? The NASA Acquisition Internet Service (NAIS) switched from Oracle to Mysql about 1 year ago. The MySQL announcement can be read here. MySQL's news page also has highlights of many companies who have made the switch.

Did everyone forget that one? The NASA Acquisition Internet Service (NAIS) switched from Oracle to Mysql about 1 year ago. The MySQL announcement can be read here. MySQL's news page also has highlights of many companies who have made the switch.

Kuro5hin is pronounced corrosion.

MySQL is pronounced my ess que ell.

As for the others, I usually say

et cetera profile
user local bin

etc (ha ha) when I'm talking to people. It's just faster (even though "et cetera" has more syllables than "ee tee see", it rolls off my tongue faster. I don't say et see because I don't like the sound of it.. ;)

The Gemeni table handler is produced by NuSphere, which has become demonized for not (properly) GPLing the table type as is required by the MySQL license. There is a FAQ from the MySQL folks about the dispute.

I'd hazard a guess that there'd also be opportunities for performance optimisation if they concentrated on just one table handler, though they might also thereby lose some flexibility along the way.

I don't think any of the features you list are a must have for "mission critical." Maybe if you only now how to implment database functionality with those functions... but that's like saying a programming language is worthless becuase it doesn't have a tertiary operator. Maybe a developer who only knows how to program with that operator will become useless on the new language, but someone who LEARNS TO ADAPT will thrive.

Transactions: I seem to find transaction support

SubSelects: You don't need to do these, it can be worked around pretty easily.

Foreign Keys: Again, many simple workarounds.

Views: Good ridance. A maintenance nightmare.

If everyone just keeps doing everything the same, we're gonna end up with a lot of budweiser.

M@

I went to this link, and found the name slashdot's senior mysql guy: Brian Aker (aka krow). Seems slashdot has added code for doing better sql dumps in MySQL. If you recall back a few several hundred /. stories, you might remember that he also hacked out a method to have stored-procedure calls in MySQL. Also take note that when slashdot upgraded to version 2.1 of their infamous slashcode, Brian rewrote the schemas for InnoDB style. I'd say that we slashdot folks will see new toys based on some of this new technology because /. is so entrenched with mysql.

See.......... slashdot really is good for something... =)

One database is not better than another because it has a bigger checklist of features. If that were true, then we'd all be using Oracle (which is actually a very good RDBMS). MySQL has advantages and disadvantages over PostgreSQL. The same is true for almost any database.

Let's look at your complaints of MySQL lacking features one by one:

no proper transactions

Yes it does! If you use certain table types.

no subselects

This is a nice feature, but *not* necessary. Many times a proper JOIN can be used instead. Alternately you just use multiple SQLs. However, this is the one missing feature of MySQL that I want the most.

no foreign keys

You don't need foreign keys to maintain referential integrity. A proper GUI, among many other things, can enforce this anyway. It is a nice feature, but definitely not needed in a well designed system. Further they slow down performance and I have seen projects where they are not used because of this.

views

These can be nice too, but I personally never use them. They are simply not required in any project I've ever seen. Actually I think views are confusing because they mask the real tables. I think this is a style issue more than anything else, YMMV.

How can this be a "mission critical" SQL database?

How about better performance.

Don't get me wrong. I like PostgreSQL too. They are both great and both are very useful in production environments. Why does there only have to be one open source database? The competition is truly healthy for both products and ultimately for us developers.

One database is not better than another because it has a bigger checklist of features. If that were true, then we'd all be using Oracle (which is actually a very good RDBMS). MySQL has advantages and disadvantages over PostgreSQL. The same is true for almost any database.

Let's look at your complaints of MySQL lacking features one by one:

no proper transactions

Yes it does! If you use certain table types.

no subselects

This is a nice feature, but *not* necessary. Many times a proper JOIN can be used instead. Alternately you just use multiple SQLs. However, this is the one missing feature of MySQL that I want the most.

no foreign keys

You don't need foreign keys to maintain referential integrity. A proper GUI, among many other things, can enforce this anyway. It is a nice feature, but definitely not needed in a well designed system. Further they slow down performance and I have seen projects where they are not used because of this.

views

These can be nice too, but I personally never use them. They are simply not required in any project I've ever seen. Actually I think views are confusing because they mask the real tables. I think this is a style issue more than anything else, YMMV.

How can this be a "mission critical" SQL database?

How about better performance.

Don't get me wrong. I like PostgreSQL too. They are both great and both are very useful in production environments. Why does there only have to be one open source database? The competition is truly healthy for both products and ultimately for us developers.

Things that beat any Microsoft offering are:

here
here
here
here
here
and here

And if you want to delve deeper into Answer #1:

Included when you buy a Mac:
iTunes
iMovie
Mac OS X
Quicktime

Things worth paying for (if they're your can of soup):
Final Cut Pro
FileMaker
AppleWorks

I hear complaints that the cheapest Mac is still more expensive than the cheap PC's. So what? You get what you pay for. Does the PC include a Unix-based OS that's fast and slick as hell (KDE & Gnome are neither.)? No. Does it come with a full-fledged MP3 manager/player/ripper? No. Gotta pay the Microsoft Tax if you actually want to legally convert your CD's into a digital format. Do they come with a real movie editing program? Nope, don't have that either. MS Movie Maker is a poor excuse for anything. And best of all, I don't need Microsoft ANYTHING to use my Mac! Or use my Sun workstation, either!

Here are just a few of the tools that are considered traditionally in UNIX/Linux/BSD territory that are available for Win32. In all actuality, there's enough out there to get as much of Linux running on Win32 as Win32 running under WINE.
XFree86: http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/xfree/
KDE: http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/
GTK/PHP/Libglade: http://gtk.php.net/download.php

Apache: http://www.apache.org
PHP: http://www.php.net
PHPTriad: http://www.phpgeek.com
Perl: http://www.activestate.com
Ruby: http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/ruby/downloads/ ruby-install.html
Python: http://www.python.org/download/download_windows.ht ml
TCL/TK: http://www.pconline.com/%7Eerc/tclwin.htm

MySQL: http://www.mysql.com
MySQL ODBC: http://www.mysql.com/downloads/api-myodbc.html
PostgreSQL: Included in cygwin (only works on NT)

ATT's U/WIN* Unix for Windows: http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin/
Cygwin: http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/
DJGPP: http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/
Native UNIX command-line binaries: http://www.wzw.tu-muenchen.de/~syring/win32/UnxUti ls.html

vi: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~tmgil/vi.html
Emacs: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/voelker/ntemacs .html
OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org

Mozilla: http://www.mozilla.org
GIMP: http://user.sgic.fi/~tml/gimp/win32/

List of GNU software for Windows: http://www.gnusoftware.com/
And so on . . .

There's a list over at DMOZ.org of a lot of this.

Here are just a few of the tools that are considered traditionally in UNIX/Linux/BSD territory that are available for Win32. In all actuality, there's enough out there to get as much of Linux running on Win32 as Win32 running under WINE.
XFree86: http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/xfree/
KDE: http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/
GTK/PHP/Libglade: http://gtk.php.net/download.php

Apache: http://www.apache.org
PHP: http://www.php.net
PHPTriad: http://www.phpgeek.com
Perl: http://www.activestate.com
Ruby: http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/ruby/downloads/ ruby-install.html
Python: http://www.python.org/download/download_windows.ht ml
TCL/TK: http://www.pconline.com/%7Eerc/tclwin.htm

MySQL: http://www.mysql.com
MySQL ODBC: http://www.mysql.com/downloads/api-myodbc.html
PostgreSQL: Included in cygwin (only works on NT)

ATT's U/WIN* Unix for Windows: http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin/
Cygwin: http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/
DJGPP: http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/
Native UNIX command-line binaries: http://www.wzw.tu-muenchen.de/~syring/win32/UnxUti ls.html

vi: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~tmgil/vi.html
Emacs: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/voelker/ntemacs .html
OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org

Mozilla: http://www.mozilla.org
GIMP: http://user.sgic.fi/~tml/gimp/win32/

List of GNU software for Windows: http://www.gnusoftware.com/
And so on . . .

There's a list over at DMOZ.org of a lot of this.

1. OpenNap
2. XFree86
3. Cygwin
4. Emacs
5. Vi and Vim
6. Mojo Nation
7. Visual Tcl
8. MikTEX
9. Open Perl IDE
10. Mozilla
11. WinCVS
12. BitchX
13. Firebird
14. mySQL

In the development todo for mySQL 4, they have a list of "Things that must be done in the real near future". Quite far down on that list I found:

"* Add support for UNICODE."

That's great, because mySQL 4 is about to be released any day now.
As a PHP developer I wanted to know if php supports unicode. This is what I found:

Strings:
"A string is series of characters. In PHP, a character is the same as a byte, that is, there are exactly 256 different characters possible. This also implies that PHP has no native support of Unicode."

Hi! I agree that PostgreSQL has some fetatures that MySQL also has, but it's also true that MySQL has a lot of features that PostgreSQL doesn't have.
To not have to repeat myself over and over again, I have collected some information about this topic here

Speedwise I haven't seen any indication that PostgreSQL 7.1 would generally be faster than MySQL. All the tests I have myself run shows that it there is no big speed improvment between earlier PostgreSQL version and 7.1, if you run both with flushing of data disabled. (We will soon publish the results on our benchmark page)

For many applications, MySQL is in practice at least 3 times faster than PostgreSQL 7.1. If you applications needs the extra speed MySQL can give, PostgreSQL is not an option.

According to what I know, the InnoDB transaction handling engine in MySQL is at least as good as the PostgreSQL transaction engine. (I would argue that is even better, as you never have to run a 'vacuum' on InnoDB!)

My simple message is that both MySQL and PostgreSQL has a place. One can't generally say which is better, in the same way you can't say if a hammer or a screw driver is the right tool, if you don't know what it should be used for. For a lot of real world applications, MySQL is simple the best choice. The same is true for PostgreSQL.

Regards, Monty
CTO of MySQL AB

Yep, all of these people are using it, and many look like it's in places where the data matters. Lots of fools around, ... NASA, yahoo...

No it doesn't. Ever read the documentation?