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MySQL Founder Starts Open Database Alliance, Plans Refactoring
Gary Pendergast writes "Monty Widenius, the 'father' of MySQL, has created the the Open Database Alliance, with the aim of becoming the industry hub for the MySQL open source database. He wants to unify all MySQL-related development and services, providing a potential solution to the fragmentation and uncertainty facing the communities, businesses and technical experts involved with MySQL, following the news of the Oracle acquisition of Sun." Related to this, an anonymous reader writes that "MySQL has announced a project to refactor MySQL to be a more Drizzle-like database." Update: 05/14 20:50 GMT by T : Original headline implied that this was a project of Sun, but (thanks to the open source nature of MySQL) it's actually Monty Widenius — no longer with Sun — leading this effort.
I didn't ask if it worked. I asked in what scenario it would be a superior option (to the well-informed application architect, of course). The only real reason you gave is that you don't know much about Postgres. That means you're not really qualified to answer the question.
Does it scale better? Does it have better security? Is it easier to manage in some way? Is there a killer feature its two closest competitors lack? Those might be actual answers to the question. "I don't know much about it" is not an answer.
It's certainly commonly perceived that Postgres will scale better, and that it has a rather complete featureset. If this is indeed the case, I can't see a reason to select MySQL for a new project. Why limit yourself?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
MySQL is well documented so that all the bugs are turned into features:
Mein Broder: So, in MySQL, when you exceed the maximum size of a TEXT column, does it throw an exception, or does it just truncate the data to fit?
Me: Well, it being MySQL, it will probably do something differently on Tuesdays than it does on the vernal equinox... but it probably will throw an exception and bitch about how you suck at data planning. Which is the proper thing to do, because who would want their database silently truncating data?
Mein Broder: In this case, I'd actually prefer it, 'cause otherwise I'd have to programmatically truncate it myself. These data aren't really that important, and truncating would be acceptable. It would be nice if I could be a lazy programmer.
Me: I think you're out of luck. But let's take a look:
Me: Astounding. Your desire to be a lazy, shiftless programmer has been facilitated by other lazy, shiftless programmers who have built the world's most rickety database management system.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
It was during MySQL AB's time that MySQL began a stange play with the community by first dropping official community binary builds, and then severely delaying source code releases as well (while supplying commercial clients with more stable and up to date releases).
It was again during MySQL AB's time when the announcement came that MySQL's source code base will start to "close down", by releasing many new features only commercially, and with no open source code. When Sun bought MySQL AB, they reversed those policies and stood behind MySQL being open, without exceptions.
Now Mr. Monty Widenius has taken the money Sun paid for MySQL AB, and used it to open a new company and an "Open" alliance which is "designed to become the industry hub for the MySQL open source database, including MySQL and derivative code, binaries, training, support, and other".
If even Mr. Widenius has noble intentions regarding MySQL, his past in MySQL AB and his current interaction with Sun/Oracle seem to leave another impression.
MySQL is better because I know how to use it and it works well enough. If I were to switch to Postgres, then I would have to spend time learning it.
My manager would rather me move some other feature forward rather than replace database A with database B.
When we hire somebody new, it is easier to find candidates who already know MySQL. That matters too.
-ec
...I saw in one presentation their chief architect did. They had no complaints about it; apparently it scales brilliantly as long as the db schema is very simple.
For heavy-weight databases though, I gather it's not so good.
throw new NoSignatureException();
I just threw up. As my keyboard shorted in its vomit bath, it outputted a random string of characters and symbols, which just happen to execute without warnings when piped to perl.
Is the new slashcode out already?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"