Major Changes To MySQL Coming Soon

Meltr writes: "This ZDNET article details some of the coming changes to the MySQL database server. In 4.0, to be released in mid-October: 'support for the Unicode character set, the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocol, embedded database links and multitable updates' and in 4.1, to be released in December: 'nested queries and stored procedures'."

Comments

Decent comparison of mysql and pgsql

[Khazunga]

Does anyone know of a good comparison of both databases? Not the usual "X as feature A, while Y has not. Y is faster.". These are open-source products, so there's room for design analysis, not just the ZDNet style checklists... There's room to review the design and implementation decisions. This would ideally involve established members of both dev communities.

What I'd like to see is a profound comparison of mysql and postgresql. I'm a happy user of both, and I currently have pgsql serving a 8 million pageviews/month site, and handling load gracefully. AFAICare, pgsql is at least fast enough. I also never had any reliability/data loss problems with mysql, despite heavy concurrent access. AFAICare, mysql is robust enough. I'd really like to find out what are the core differences in both designs to get a grasp of how fast they may evolve.

The best opensource DBMS/R is here ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am quite frightened when i see people still using MySQL ...

Ok, it's a nice database but it lacks from major steps :

- fast and decent transactions
- procedures
- triggers
- views ... (AFAIR there is no views)

Why do not people user alternative database such as PostgreSQL or Interbase ?

For instance insterbase and its sister projects (IB Phoenix : http://www.ibphoenix.org/ , FireBird: http://firebird.sourceforge.net , ...)

The basic specs of interbase are :
- full SQL92 compliant (entry level)
- not fully SQL99 compliant

For instance you have :

- fast transactions
- super fast blob/clob feature
- procedure (full SQL92 here!!!)
- trigger
- strucutred data types
- JDBC2.0 driver (type 4 JDBC3.0 is underway ...)
- cool tools (admin, major crash fix and recovery stuffs ...)
- easy data deployment (thru .gdb files)

Under linux there are 2 architecture, the classical server and the super server (cf the docs).

There are also cool and nice free GUI admin tools such as IBAccess:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ibaccess/

All these stuffs are opensourced and free (as in beer) !

No more hesitation ... go for a powerfull database ;-)

Re:The best opensource DBMS/R is here ...

[Colin]

I use MySQL for one of my web based applications, and I use Oracle for others. For the one I use MySQL for, I chose it because:

- It's easy to run.
I don't have to do much (if any) maintenance and management - I don't need to check if redo logs are too small, don't need to check for extents growing out of control etc.

- It's fast.
For my application - with simple inserts and deletes, MySQL is really quick. That saves me money - I can get away with a single processor Linux box for my database server, rather than something much more expensive.

- I don't need the features of a larger database.
I'm using MySQL to store and retrive information - basically a distributed file system. I don't need clever locking, transactions, views, foreign keys, triggers, stored procedures. On the applications I do need those features, I use Oracle.

- It's cheap
I looked at PostgreSQL, but it was going to take me a while to figure out how to get it set up - I find MySQL very easy to install and get running. Oracle was going to be very expensive - and it's not that easy to install and get running properly.
When you add in the costs of installation, learning how the software behaves, and the management time in keeping the software running, MySQL (for me) came out as the most cost effective option.

Colin.

Re:Why MySQL ?

[pere]

The answer is "because it does the job".

Most small projects does not need transactions, subqueries or locking. And to really take advantages of such features you need to have some good understanding of databases.

With mySQL you can actually make fearly decent, fearly fast and fearly stable application without using hours trying to design things optimal, (and actually without not really understanding what you are doing.)

If you worry about +2-4 percent performance, how to handle peeks of hundreds of hits a second... then you have several good databases to choose from.

If you should store a few thousand posts, and are hoping for a few hundred hits a day, and your web-application had deadline yesterday, and you are aout to start developing (90% of the web-application of today).... mySQL is a killer!

(You can use it for other things as well. And it does scale fairly well (so Im told)... but then you should consider several other good databases..like PostreSQL)

Re:More vapourware

[OblongPlatypus]

What you're forgetting is that in many web-based applications, the data *doesn't matter* (not more than nightly backups will take care of, anyway). MySQL is perfect for a whole range of web-related work, and these new additions will make it even more useful.

And in reply to the parent of the parent of this post, I really don't see how the term vaporware fits here. Sure, MySQL is a different class of database than (for example) Postgres, but that doesn't make it a useless product. Besides, at the rate MySQL is going these days, I wouldn't be surprised if they could be considered up to par with Postgres in a few years. If they can keep the speed up there while adding new features, the competition will have a hard time... well, competing.

Why people use MySQL

[ACK!!]

It goes a little like this:

1. Someone needs a small easy to install database quick.
2. Sysadmin knows PostGres is superior but also knows that MySQL is dead easy to set-up quickly. He has set up MySQL before since someone told him how easy it was. He uses that.
3. People are so impressed in the organization that he got the thing up quickly they start suggesting MySQL for larger projects where it falls flat.
4. The organization gets turned off to Open-Source databases and chooses Oracle or DB2 instead totally bypassing PostGres which is sad.

In the end PostGres gets completely bypassed. Lots of people cut their teeth on MySQL so when someone needs a small database set up really quick they choose it. If more people used PostGres initially I think they would never look back. However, I understand immediately why MySQL is used so often.