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PostgreSQL vs. MySQL comparison

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the get-the-morning-starter dept.

prostoalex writes "Ever find yourself wondering which open source database is the best tool for the job? Well, wonder no more, and let your tax dollars do the work in the form of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory publishing this unbiased review of MySQL vs. PostgreSQL. After reading it, however, it seems that MySQL ranks the same or better on most of the accounts." My poor sleepy eyes misread the date of posting on here; caveat that this is more then 15 months old.

6 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. No Digg by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Informative

    1. There's no such thing as unbiased. Especially on a page that gives a fairly abstract review.

    2. This article is 2 years old. Everything in its comparisons is out of date.

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    1. Re:No Digg by electroniceric · · Score: 5, Informative

      Just to continue on your good points, especially troubling is the fact that this article compares the then-unreleased MySQL 5 to the Postgres 7.x series. Nearly all the drawbacks to Postgres that this article highlights have been addressed in the 8.x series.

      We run Postgres for our main business application and the main limitations are of two forms:
      1) Depth of community
      The Postgres community is great - very responsive and knowledgeable, but its size is a limitation in a number of ways. The ODBC driver is a bit of stepchild to the main project, and some key functions like dblink that address missing features like cross-database selects are relegated to /contrib, and rely on their individual authors for nearly all maintenance. This means that as a user you are more likely to bump up against the bleeding edge earlier than in communities where these outside-the-core projects are more supported.

      For the same reason a key subset of its documentation is very sparse. Documentation for the core system is thorough, clear and concise, but anything in contrib or any projects like the ODBC or .NET drivers are much less like to have the same quality of documentaton. Postgres' extremely powerful GIST indexes are unparalled as a feature, but you need a background in theoretical CompSci to figure them out, thanks to limited documentation (note to aspire database index geeks - I would gladly buy a book on GIST aimed at proficient DBAs who are not giants of theoretical CS). Likewise its procedural languages: thanks to its architecture and open codebase, Postgres offers more server-side languages than any other database that I know of, but few of them have more than basic documentation, let alone the stacks of books you'd find with other procedural languages.

      2) Postgres is very close to being a true enterprise contender (unlike MySQL, which is evolving that direction but distinctly further off), but lacks some key features like XML handling, a more comprehensible approach to result sets (anyone who's dealt with rowtypes and casting resultsets can attest to the steep learning curve), and a userbase that has put the product through the wringer. Now that some corporate heads are getting interested (e.g. Sun, Red Hat, EnterpriseDB) hopefully some of these shortcomings will be addressed in short order.

      Don't let this outdated, apples to oranges comparison fool you: Postgres is a very solid and usable database.

  2. Old news by daffmeister · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the site:

    "Last modified: February 15, 2005."

  3. Old and wrong by ldapboy · · Score: 5, Informative

    postgresql has a native Win32 version, complete with an installer, service support and does not depend on cygwin.

  4. Re:Foreign Keys by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is unbiased? Give me a break.

    WTF is with putting up an "unbiased comparison" between Postgres 7.2 and MySQL 5.0 when Postgres is now up to 8.2 and has most of their concerns addressed in that release, whereas MySQL is still at 5.0?

    MySQL is a great database, if you need clustering but not referencial integrity or ACID compliance, that is.

    --
    -1 Uncomfortable Truth
  5. Re:Foreign Keys by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 5, Informative

    Untrue.

    The client library is GPL. That means you cannot create a commercial program that uses it without using the commercial licensed version. Which is $200 per client

    You can't even create a library and not ship mysql - the mysql site is very clear that they consider distributing a program that *uses* mysql as being exactly the same as distributing mysql itself:

    http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/comme rcial-license.html

    Typical examples of MySQL distribution include: ...
            * Selling software that requires customers to install MySQL themselves on their own machines.

    Specifically:

            * If you develop and distribute a commercial application and as part of utilizing your application, the end-user must download a copy of MySQL; for each derivative work, you (or, in some cases, your end-user) need a commercial license for the MySQL server and/or MySQL client libraries.

    This makes mysql unusable for anything except large products. Our entire product only cost $70 for the single user version. No way in hell we're upping the price by $200 a copy.