Slashdot Mirror
PostgreSQL 7.3 Released
rtaylor writes "Nearly a year's worth of work is out. The new tricks include schema support, prepared queries, dependency tracking, improved privileges, table (record) based functions, improved internationalization support, and a whole slew of other new features, fixes, and performance improvements. Release Email - Download Here - Mirror FTP sites (at bottom)."
It's an Oracle killer based on the fact that 80% of Oracle installations out there are overkill.
Seriously, look at the amount of Oracle installations out there. Now how many of them _need_ any of those features? Is it worth the extra cost of Oracle? More than likely it's all some marketing crap that eveyrone is led to believe than "only Oracle can do this".
My PHB is like this. He insists we use Oracle because we need an "industrial strength database", for a db with 40,000 records. Argh! Oracle is freaking expensive, we got Larry Ellison crusing around in some damn yacht race on our bill. In our case, Postgre would be an Oracle-killer, it's just getting people past that fact that Oracle is unnecessary for alot of applications.
I think that's the sort of thing that as soon as that feature is filled in, people will say it's "just" something else that's missing. There are a bunch of features I can think of that would be nice and PostgreSQL doesn't have. And probably there's someone who considers each one to be vital:
Let's go down the list:
...and a year after the bug was fixed, do we see a benchmark update? Nope.
...whatever.)
What the MySQL developers conveniently fail to mention is that if you use transaction-aware table types, performance drops dramatically. Under load with multiple concurrent connections, PostgreSQL is pretty close to the speed of MySQL or faster by default and blows MySQL's doors off when MySQL is transaction safe.
Regarding foreign key constraints, see note regarding transactions. And if you are really concerned about fk speed, you don't have to use them in PostgreSQL either.
Record locks hunh? It may surprise you to know that as a user, you don't need to explicitly tell PostgreSQL to lock tables with your queries. Ever. This a relational design issue. This should be handled by your database architect when they layout the table structure, rules, foreign keys, views, and triggers. You do have someone that designs the table structure ahead of time right? Sure you do. But why don't you have to explicitly lock the tables is PostgreSQL?
Maybe it's because PostgreSQL is smart enough to know when you need them without your help.
Transactions? Aren't those only for banks and e-commerce? Nope. Let's say you want to update all the users in Slashdot to give all of those loyal geeks one extra karma point. So you select on all users, grab their current karma, add one, and update the record. This has two problems: concurrency and completion. What happens if the user is moderated up or down in between the moment that the record is selected and the moment it's updated? Looks like the user has accidentally been given either (a) an extra point or (b) had a point taken away. Also look at what happens if the database goes down while doing the work (someone kicked a cord), who got the extra point and who didn't? Darn. Wish I had transactions...
So you use the transaction-aware MySQL tables. Wow! Performance has sure dropped out and we have to think about implementation details like locks. I sure wish there was a way to avoid stupid programming mistakes like forgetting a lock. Well...you could use just about any other database out there (including PostgreSQL).
As for stored procedures and triggers, you need not talk about features that aren't here *yet*. Version 4 isn't out of beta yet and you're hanging on a possible v5 feature? While we're at it, let's talk about how multi-master replication will appear in PostgreSQL by then. And didn't you hear? Microsoft's IIS will have its security holes patched up in two years too. Vaporware is vaporware. Believe it when you can download it.
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Now then, on to personal gripes about MySQL above and beyond the ones I have listed above.
Benchmarks: On MySQL's benchmark page comparing PostgreSQL, they complain that no utilities are available for benchmarking but their own. This is not strictly true. No benchmark can be made because the syntax to the different RDBMSs are so dissimilar that none can be made currently without a strong bias. Stored procedure support, for example, would definitely skew results away from MySQL. But that wouldn't be fair for a benchmarking tool since MySQL doesn't support stored procedures. The same is true of triggers, rules, views, and other such "unimportant" features.
Of course MySQL's benchmark shows MySQL in a good light. They use only the feature set of MySQL to perform the benchmark.
They also mention on the page that they've contacted the PostgreSQL developers for tuning information and methods of improving the benchmark tool. I cannot express loudly enough that THIS IS A LIE! The PostgreSQL mailing list has many instances of developers reporting that they (a) never heard about this "contact" until someone pointed out the MySQL page, and (b) they have been ignored when they've tried to submit tuning techniques and other optimizations. Sounds like some people don't want their benchmarks to give the "wrong" results. Heaven forbid!
As it stands now, the benchmark is a year and a half old. MySQL is on its 53rd patch revision and PostgreSQL is two minor version releases later since this benchmark was released. Weren't you saying something about posting stale information? They still have a page complaining about vacuum bugs and the desire for a newer version of PostgreSQL that fixes the problem.
Feature comparisons: another source of info, it talks about the query speed on mostly read only data. Did someone forget to mention that flat files are even faster for mostly read only data?
It states that since MySQL has more users, it must be better than PostgreSQL. Funny how that logic doesn't seem to work for Windows. They use the same logic with the number of books. It wouldn't surprise me if there were more books on DOS than Linux. Does that make DOS better? Does that say anything about the relative quality of those books? No.
MySQL supports more APIs and languages. This is correct unless you want to count stored procedure languages. Oh wait, MySQL doesn't support stored procedures. (Yet! They'll be there in two or three years or so.
It then touts MySQL's fine replication facilities. Hello people! How often has slashdot gone down due to database issues? Hardly a poster child for stability or reliability.
According to mysql.com, PostgreSQL doesn't have a unit test/regression test. It makes one wonder if they've even used PostgreSQL.
PostgreSQL is said to be deficient with ODBC. Too bad they couldn't provide any specifics.
I'll relax about the statement that MySQL had more functionality with ALTER TABLE. FYI for readers, that has just changed with PostgreSQL 7.3.
They are correct that PostgreSQL doesn't have MERGE. Instead, they use the SQL92 standard UNION. Does the same thing. And let's not forget about views. What was that!? MySQL has extensive use of non-standard syntax? Any queries you write in MySQL will only have a prayer of working on MySQL? Say it ain't so!
PostgreSQL has had full text search for a while as part of contrib.
I don't even want to start with "MySQL Server is coded from the start to be multi-threaded, while PostgreSQL uses processes." Aside from databases on Windows, this helps whom significantly? A clue folks: Apache HTTPd also uses processes extensively. Pure thread support was only really added for the sake of Windows. This is one of those times where stability and consistency are more important than raw speed. This is your data!
And on and on...
As a final note, I would like everyone to take a trip down memory lane with me and recall that the MySQL dev team didn't see a need for MySQL to have transactions or any other of those "fancy" things at all until a couple of years ago -- when everyone started to realize that MySQL wasn't really twice as fast as PostgreSQL even though MySQL was crippled feature-wise.
The MySQL has so much misleading information (apart from the items that are outright false) on the web site, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who wants correct information, "current" or otherwise.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Too bad. When Internet burned tons of startup money, they hired lots of "so-called programmers" to do web-development stuff. No wonder that MySQL and PHP (and Linux!) was typically a choice. Who cares about transactions? Who cares about aspect separation? Just show the first home page to the boss!
The positive outcome: big bosses heard about Linux. Could Linux be where it is now without those so-called programmers? I doubt so. Professional Services from IBM and Microsoft would decide for you what technology to use after your boss has decided what partnership contract to sign.
But that wasn't the only way to "educate" big bosses about Linux: startup boom sparked Linux marketing boom creating OSDN, and others, including Slashdot. As a result, Linux is not self-selling itself: everyone loves Linux therefore Linux is protecting your investments. Crowd effect.
Could it be possible would Linux be really bad? No. Why it didn't happened to PostgreSQL? I think b/c PostgreSQL-based few companies didn't care about marketing. Or cared wrong. Or didn't have money to care. Compared to what? To Linux. Try to find some subject about Linux using google - besides mail-lists you've got many official documents, FAQs, HOWTOs, learning courses, support companies. Try to do it for PostgreSQL - mostly mail-lists and few official docs.
With improved better marketing PostgreSQL may become in one or two years as Linux today. Without good marketing only PostgreSQL developers, few enthusiasts and some Slashdot readers will know that not all open-source databases are so bad.
Less is more !