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Ask Slashdot: Which OSS Database Project To Help?
DoofusOfDeath writes "I've done a good bit of SQL development / tuning in the past. After being away from the database world for a while to finish grad school, I'm about ready to get back in the game. I want to start contributing to some OSS database project, both for fun and perhaps to help my employment prospects in western Europe. My problem is choosing which OSS DB to help with. MySQL is the most popular, so getting involved with it would be most helpful to my employment prospects. But its list of fundamental design flaws (video) seems so severe that I can't respect it as a database. I'm attracted to the robust correctness requirements of PostgreSQL, but there don't seem to be many prospective employers using it. So while I'd enjoy working on it, I don't think it would be very helpful to my employment prospects. Any suggestions?"
I've used Postgres commercially for years, with a number of employers. It's a great DB and having dealt with MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, et al I'd never go back - though the softies tell me that SQL Server is much better these days.
I'd be surprised if you can't find plenty of work using Postgres. Maybe it's one of those things people don't feel comfortable talking about - like Delphi in the 90s. Plenty of people used it, but few would own up to what made up their "secret sauce".
It's seeing a constant rise in usage. Also many projects (spacewalk!) have it as the only viable alternative to Oracle.
Small companies with small to mid sized applications use it (see Jira or Fisheye, at Atlassian) as their main development platform.
Also you shouldn't use your USA'ish perspective and only do something because it will benefit your job or future employer. OSS is about sharing, fun, knowlege and getting better. Getting better at your job is a welcome side effect.
You will probably be happier in the fewer postresql shops. Think about it do you want to get it done quick and dirty or the right way?
No sir I dont like it.
If you are an active member committing to a major database's code, then it will help your employment prospects no matter what. If you're committing to PostgreSQL regularly, that's strong evidence you are good at what you do.
You might want to take a look at MariaDB, it's a continuation of the MySQL project by the original author of MySQL.
Bits of code, random ramblings: jakimfett.com
I actually love MySQL, but FWIW, someone noted a while back that Salesforce.com has announced intent to hire about 50 top gun PostgreSQL guys in the coming year. It seems obvious that they are preparing to unhook the money siphon leading to Oracle. Assuming Salesforce follows through, all the herd-following executives in the U.S. will want to do the same. So I predict that demand for PostgreSQL talent will be pretty good for many years.
https://kb.askmonty.org/en/community-contributing-to-the-mariadb-project/
We (yes, I work for the project) are always looking for new contributors. There are lots of exciting things happening right now.
I recommend setting yourself about fixing some of that long list of fundamental flaws in MySQL.
Traditionally, especially in 2012, this amounts to listing stuff like "doesn't have transactions" which was fixed back in Bush the Second's first term.
Shoveling thru obsolete FUD to find the truth is a harder job than you'd think, which also shows "good little worker bee" stick-to-it-ive-ness
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Actually I wasn't. I figured the /. crowd might have some knowledge about the relative acceptance and prevalence of the two databases in European business settings, and where things are moving.
For example, if the consensus was that PostgreSQL was so rarely used that it was a dead-end, then I'd suck it up and work on MySQL despite my misgivings.
But as long as PostgreSQL is showing some signs of life in a business setting, I'll perhaps try to pitch in on that.
I also figured that maybe there was some other up-and-coming database out there that I should take a look at. The /. community is good at bringing alternatives like this to light.
As far as flames, I should have been clearer about what I meant by "design flaws". I realize that it's somewhat subjective. What I should have said is that MySQL's behavior strikes me as a lot more surprising in some cases than does PostgreSQL's, and I didn't think that was going to chance. (Probably in a similar vein, I like strongly typed programming languages and compile-time correctness checks. I think it's a mindset kind of thing.)
The post is basically a troll for a video. The video is based on an old list of MySQL 4.x gotchas, many of which were fixed in the 5.x series. Most of them involve things like the semantics of NULL in special cases, truncation of indexed strings with trailing spaces, and similar stuff that an application shouldn't be relying on. There's a comparable list of PostGreSQL gotchas from the same source.
MySQL has political problems, because Oracle owns it and would prefer users buy their commercial products. The future of the free version is uncertain. The problems in the video aren't the ones to worry about.
Pretty much all the test cases from that video fail on MySQL if the sql-mode is set to traditional. MySQL will throw an error when data would be truncated, throws an error when you try to insert a NULL value in a NOT NULL column, refuses to alter a table if the existing data would be truncated, throws an error on an invalid date, on select only returns a warning for division by 0 but throws an error on an insert of division by 0, throws an error if you try to insert a string into a numeric column and so on.
I understand of course that the strict modes aren't enabled by default but they're easy enough to enable if you choose to. Via my.cnf, the command line when mysqld is started up or while connected to the mysql server itself (for just that session, or globally for all sessions).
I didn't run through all their examples, but mostly because I got bored and all their examples that I did try were throwing errors (except the select 1/0 one, which issued a warning) with the sql-mode set to traditional on MySQL (postgresql is also a sql-mode option but I didn't play with that one since I've never used it before).
First I should probably burn some karma and say "what a load of garbage". The headline asks what OSS database to HELP with, but the article summary might as well read "Which free SQL-compatible database to learn to use". And on top of that it contains the answer already, along with questionable dirt-showing on MySQL which makes it read like a guerilla-ad for PostgreSQL.
But in any case, it makes a major, huge difference whether the question is "which database codebase to contribute improvements to" or "which free database to learn for best amployment chances". Sounds like it's the latter, and in that case a follow-up question is what kind of employment. The one correct answer is "whichever database your employee is using" - don't expect to be able to choose a job on the basis of what database engine they happen to be using in one of the departments at the time. Second best answer is go with both; and again it makes a huge difference whether it's for self-employed web-site design or financial analysis for stock brokerage firm.
And if you actually went with MySQL, next question is which database engine. Huh, you ask? Well you see, MySQL is not a single database engine, in actuality it's a front-end to pluggable database engines. The stock release fetures at lest MyISAM, InnoDB, Heap, BDB, NDB and Archive (and few variations). In general it's a choice between MyISAM or InnoDB which are whole different story. When most people say "MySQL has such and such problem" they're actually talking about MyISAM, but MySQL has defaulted to InnoDB engine for years.
But the third and best answer is "none of the above". In most cases everybody seeking employment in relevant job will be fluent in SQL and have at least some experience with both MySQL and PosgreSQL, and it'll be rare for the employer to be at all interested in your ability to actually "hack" the database source. NoSQL databases offer ample opportunity to differentiate both on the job-market, and on the business competitiveness arena by improving the source-code (and in most cases as long as the binaries stay in-house, so can the source which makes bosses happy, but consult your OSS license).
If only they were actually edge cases(look carefully they mentioned one was a common Ruby on Rails mistake). MySQL's habit of pretending everything is alright when it's not has burned more than one of my previous employers.
But they missed the real WTFs like mysqldump creating dumps that need to be hand edited before MySQL will restore them or my all time favorite: mysql user authentication simply does a "SELECT * from mysql.users" and if the fields get reordered by a new MySQL release then logins will simply fail. The best part is that the officially documented way to fix that is a mysqldump followed by a restore which... deletes the table and puts the fields in the wrong order again. The last major MySQL upgrade of my employer's systems involved me starting the new install from an empty DB, restoring everything except the mysql.users table and recreating the accounts using a script.
Please don't pretend it's not a crap database. Those of us who have to deal with it every day know better.
Get a VPS from Linode. Install postgreSQL.
The simplest way to say it is that MySQL is really more of a data store than a database. You can store stuff in it, and it'll get the data back reasonably efficiently, but in terms of actually operating as a proper compliant database for critical information it just isn't designed that way. It works great for storing the back end for your web server, but if you wanted to store complex data in it and needed it to be 100% accurate, transactional, and reliable, the product just doesn't fit the bill. For all that it's got a paid "enteprise" edition, it's really more in the space of something like SQLite or SQL CE than it is in the space of Oracle, and again it's not an issue of whether it can scale or whether it's buggy, it just simply isn't designed to be compliant to the required level. That's largely the reason it works so well as a LAMP back end and is so easy to administer, but it just isn't fit for purpose for much more.
Most of what's shitty about it is the MyISAM storage engine, which does approximately dick-all for enforcing integrity. It doesn't even have foreign key constraints. IIRC it can't do transactions either. The trade off is that it's slightly faster for some operations *eyeroll*
If MyISAM is good enough for your application then you may as well—no exaggeration—just use MongoDB or something.
InnoDB is much better. It's got some of the same not-confidence-inspiring quirks shown in the video but at least it supports transactions and foreign key constraints.
Biggest remaining differences off the top of my head are that Postgres supports a shitload more data types and data operations (many through plugins) like stuff related to geographic data and key-value stores (hey, you got NoSQL in my SQL!), and that Postgres has real separate databases, not just separate schema like MySQL, the difference there being strict separation of the data, so you can't, say, do a SELECT across two databases or even tell that there are other databases if you've only got a user account on one of them.
Lots of other under-the-hood stuff, I'm sure, but those are the main ones I can think of from a user's perspective.
Postgres is way, way more powerful, MySQL is (slightly) more widely supported and (IMO) the free tools, both command line and GUI, for working with it are easier to learn and generally friendlier.
MySQL's a completely miserable excuse for a relational database if you use MyISAM; it's only a mostly miserable excuse for a relational database with InnoDB.