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MySQL To Be Ikea Of The Database Market
Rob wrote to mention an article discussing MySQL's intent to become 'the Ikea of databases'. From the piece: "While new entrants into the open source database market, such as EnterpriseDB and Pervasive Software, have made no secret of their intentions to chase Oracle's market share, Mr Mickos said MySQL is happy to leave them to it. 'We are thankful that they are there to define the market, there is no product if you're the only vendor,' he said. "Pervasive and EnterpriseDB are going up against Oracle. We don't want to be in that space, we don't want to take the heat from Oracle. If you're working in a zoo you don't want to be the one who has to brush the teeth of the lion.'"
If you're happy with MySQL than great.
Its offered at most ASP's for next to nothing.
But just to let you know PostgreSQL 8.x now offers a native build for Windows - and is extremely powerful.
Bingo. I couldn't agree with you more. MySQL is fairly lightweight, easy to use for many newbies, and provides some pretty advanced features for most tasks. It has its quirks to be careful of, but ultimately does its job as a DBMS. MySQL is extremely quick on the read, but suffers from locking issues and concurrency issues on the write. So it's fantastic for the Web- which is why you see it so often on hosting providers and other similar providers- it's quick to put Web content into. It's quick to hold userIDs/passwords that aren't updated frequently. It's quick in anything where reads are heavy and writes are sparse. Service providers like it because it's not too resource intensive for read-heavy uses (web sites) and it has a great user model (store users in a database, provide per-database permissions and hide all other customers from seeing other people's databases) for many-user systems.
PostgreSQL does a fantastic job with sites needing more complexity. If you need to start with transactions, need good read/write performance, and feel that data integrity is key (generally things dealing with dollars, accounting systems, online applications, booking systems, etc) then of course the way to go really is PostgreSQL if supported. If it's not (as it is with many hosts), there's always some MySQL transactional support with row-level locking, but it almost seems like a hack. (as a note, PGSQL8.1Beta2 provides support for 'roles', but to my knowledge still doesn't hide other people's databases).
Anyway- Each has it's ups and downs. Service providers love MySQL because it's fast, cheap, easy, and keeps users seperate. PostgreSQL I've seen abused a bit too much for things it's not to be used for, and that has a huge performance hit. Why the bickering? Everyone thinks their tool is bigger
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Actually the windows performance of postgres is pretty up to par to the unix performance you have to tweak the settings like you have to do it in unix (read the various postgres performance guides). The performance used to be bad, but not anymore, since the cygwin layer has been dropped.
Not to say all the stuff is great, but there are some tricks to putting it together properly. It sounds like you might have nailed the back on to the bookshelves before making sure they were completely straight. The backs keep them rigid, some of their stuff has grooves to minimize how crooked you can make them by putting the backs on wrong, but for some peices, you can be off by a half-centimeter or so even if you're careful. It's not in the instructions, you just have to have put one together crooked to realize it. I can only check this with a square or nailing in the upper half of the backing, then lifting the peice upright before lining it up straight then nailing in the rest of the back.
I'm not sure about how you aligned the glass doors, but once the thing is in place, I loosen off the screws so that the doors are loosely held, then I close the doors carefully and use something like a spatula to pry the doors into the right spot, then I open up the doors and tighten them appropriately.
But if the back isn't on quite straight, the glass doors will never look quite correct.
I haven't done a lot of their stuff, but every time you do one, you learn a little bit more about what can go wrong. You might have just taken on too big a job for a first-time assembler :-)
http://www.oracle.com/corporate/press/2005_oct/inn o.html
Perhaps MySQL is saying "We aren't competing with Oracle" because Oracle has MySQL in a difficult position. Oracle just purchased InnoBase, the makers of InnoDB. They get to "renegotiate" the terms next year. MySQL may end up having to drop the InnoDB storage engine, and transactions along with it. After all, it's Oracle's option.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.