MySQL A Threat To The Big Database Vendors?

geekinexile writes: "Bloomberg is running a story on the growth of MySQL as an alternative to the big commercial database systems." The story mentions PostgreSQL as well, and presents a generally positive view of both.

Comments

Comparing MySql to Postresql

[Hornsby]

I've been using mysql for four years, and I've recently began migrating to Postgresql. I've found Posgtgresql to have all of the features that I've wished MySql had, and they don't feel "tacked on" like InnoDB and Berkeley DB support do in MySql. I would highly reccomend Postgresql over MySql for any serious application due to its native support for transactions and sub-selects. It also has wonderful features like views and stored procedures that are still in the planning phase for MySql.

Seeing as how both are free, the only winning factor for MySql at this point seems to be speed. If you're planning on using a system that doesn't have to deal with the possibility of simultanous writes to a particular table then MySql probably makes more since due to it's superiour speed; however, if you're handling a high number of concurrent writes then Postgresql is the way to go due to it's improved reliability and ACID compliance. MySql only supports table-level locking by default, which seems silly for any application where a lot of inserts are happening at the same time. I know that there are 3rd party libraries which provide a solution for this, but I'd rather use a database where these features have been planned for from the beginning.

MySql is catching up in the areas in which it's lacking, but it's still going to be a bit longer before it has a comparable feature set to some of the more industrial strength databases. On the upside, I'm glad to see free software solutions in the database market making their mark because the acceptance of these technologies will only further Linux's success in the long run.