Interview With The PostgreSQL Team

Gentu writes "OSNews features an interview with some members of the PostgreSQL team regarding the much needed replication feature, their competition to MySQL, their future plans and a "native" Windows/.NET port."

Comments

Competition

[Enrico Pulatzo]

For guys who consider Oracle and other commerical RDBMS their competition, they sure seemed to enjoy pointing out the faults of MySQL.

In my opinion, OSS needs to be more friendly to each other. If one project lacks features, don't bash them, what's the point? Just focus on your own project, and leave other people alone, especially if they're bashing you too. So what if MySQL has a marketing department. The internet was supposed to be about exchanging ideas, not bashing other people's ideas.

Re:Competition

[LarryRiedel]

For guys who consider Oracle and other commerical RDBMS their competition, they sure seemed to enjoy pointing out the faults of MySQL.

I think the connotation was that technologically MySQL(*) does not compete with PostgreSQL, not that PostgreSQL is not an alternative product.

In my opinion, OSS needs to be more friendly to each other. If one project lacks features, don't bash them, what's the point?

If PostgreSQL is underrated and underappreciated, I think the calling attention to its relative strengths is fair. Also, I think the licensing of MySQL(*) makes it a qualitatively different kind of "OSS" from PostgreSQL

Larry

* MySQL is a trademark of MySQL AB in the United States and other countries.

Re:Replication and load-balancing

[Zapman]

Why do people use oracle?

1) It's hyper expensive
2) the support organization is far from fantastic
3) It requires expensive talent to maintain

The answer to all of these issues is 'Name recognition'. Joe Average has at least heard of Oracle. CEO's and CIO's associate it with quality.

Currently, for 'high end' databases where 'high end' is defined by either CEO's or serious amounts of data, Oracle and DB2 (nee UDB or Universal Data Base) are wins.

To a corperation, nothing is more important than their data. If it can't be protected by a name they trust (whether or not that trust is misplaced) it will not penetrate the DataCenter.

Simple, so simple

[fm6]

but not all web backends require transactions or even subqueries.

And not all DBMS apps are web backends! ;)

But here's what puzzles me: if you don't need complicated queries (and I'm told MySql takes a serious performance hit even with something as simple as multi-field primary keys), why bother with a relational DBMS at all? Why not use a simple indexed record engine, like Berkeley DB?

Re:PostgreSQL to redefine databases

[mhesseltine]

Emphasis mine:

As far as MySQL goes, I have nothing against it. I grew up on Sybase and Oracle systems, so picking up PostgreSQL was easy as pie. I still haven't had enough motivation or time to pick up MySQL idiosyncracies. And I just don't see a future with MySQL or any other database like I see with PostgreSQL.

This, I think, is the key point. For those who have database experience, PostgreSQL is a fine database product. For those with no previous database experience, the power and terse nature of PostgreSQL is a hinderance.

I think that MySQL has done a better job of making an easy "starter" RDBMS. Is it the best thing on the planet? Probably not. If you start using MySQL and decide you're beating your head against the wall to do some particular thing, should you consider switching to PostgreSQL? Absolutely. Could the PostgreSQL people make it easier to start with? Sure.