There Is No Reason At All To Use MySQL: MariaDB, MySQL Founder Michael Widenius

sfcrazy writes "In this exclusive interview MySQL founder Michael Widenius talks about the reasons of decline of MySQL, what Oracle is doing wrong and how MariaDB is fast replacing it. There are quite some interesting information in this interview. The take out of this interview is '...there is no reason at all to use MySQL 5.5 instead of MariaDB 5.5. The same will be true for the next generation.'" Of course, he has an economic interest in getting people to use MariaDB. Hard to argue that Oracle isn't evil though.

Comments

Postgres

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

...there is no reason at all to use MySQL 5.5 instead of MariaDB 5.5

Or Postgres, which is better than MySQL in numerous objective/technical ways and has been for years.

Re:Postgres

[chris.alex.thomas]

I'm confused, on my debian vps, another debian dedicated server and a further centos server, I could just apt-get the new software.

since it's 100% compatible and most small websites are not even going to touch the potential problem areas, how would this cost a "lot of money" ?

I could upgrade my database in the time it takes to download the packages, hardly a lot of money and even less of time.

Re:Postgres

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

In many ways, WordPress : CMS :: MySQL : Database.

Both WordPress and MySQL are great success stories in terms of popularity and to some extent creating an ecosystem as a result. That doesn't make either of them particularly good technically. The way that WordPress was basically hard-coded to use a specific database is not any other database's fault. It's just another symptom of the questionable architectural decisions underlying it.

Re:Postgres

[larry bagina]

I think he's referring to upgrades. What if Oracle releases MySQL 7.0 Enterprise Edition SE and 2013-02-31 is no longer a valid date? Meanwhile, MariaDB starts recognizing SLECT, SELCT, SLCT, INSRT, etc as keywords so shitty PHP programmers don't have to worry about writing valid SQL queries.

Monty is a stooge

[Anonymous Coward]

The Maria builds have not been particularly special, and its hard to take anything he says about MySQL seriously. So much doublespeak. Stop posting his rants as relevant or news. This is little more than an ad for his support/consulting org.

That's funny

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also what Postres fans have been saying for years. Maybe they're right about other things?

or sqlite

[mattdm]

As a general rule of thumb, if you need something lightweight, SQLite is the way to go. If you need something more powerful or sophisticated than that, PostgreSQL.

MySQL and spinoffs all occupy an uncomfortable middle ground. 99% of the small web sites which are built around MySQL don't need it.

Re:or sqlite

[wmac1]

Most people and websites do not agree with you. Ask facebook , wikipedia and thousands of others (if not millions).

SQLite is not scalable. MySQL is lightweight and scalable.

PostgreSQL has not been successful in penetrating cheap shared hosting providers. There is no web based tool comparable to phpMyAdmin and there are more reasons why PostgreSQL has not been successful despite its technical advantages.

Re:or sqlite

[jamesh]

- Need a key-value storage? Use tdb (or any dbm-like that you can find). - Need a lightweight SQL-using database? Use SQLite. - Need a lightweight and reliable database? Use Firebird. - Need a database for your project(s) that might take off, raking millions of dollars and the one you want to rely as the backbone of your next company? Then .. use PostgreSQL.

A Mysqlite, Mariadblite, or postresqlite database would be really nice. Something that requires similar installation to sqlite (eg not much at all) and not a lot of tuning for a tiny database but that can scale up to the full thing as required. Most applications i've used have a compatibility layer that means you can choose from sqlite, mysql, or postgresql at installation time, but choosing sqlite initially because it's easy doesn't necessarily mean there is a straightforward migration path when you outgrow it.

Re:or sqlite

[CastrTroy]

I use MySQL for a lot of personal projects on a shared host. However, I don't have any idea how anyone uses PHPMyAdmin. It gets the job done in a pinch, but it really doesn't work as well as MySQL workbench. You should be able to set up an SSH tunnel so you can use MySQL workbench. I imagine the same could be done for whatever tool is popular for PostgreSQL. Using a web based tool doesn't make any sense in either case.

Re:or sqlite

[gagol]

The command sucks. I uses a led and a switch connected to my fiber to send commands.

Re:or sqlite

[S.O.B.]

PostgreSQL has not been successful in penetrating cheap shared hosting providers. There is no web based tool comparable to phpMyAdmin and there are more reasons why PostgreSQL has not been successful despite its technical advantages.

Ask and ye shall receive:

http://phppgadmin.sourceforge.net/

Re:or sqlite

[Trailer Trash]

I don't get it. I've used postgresql for years and I've never bothered tuning it. It's always worked fine out of the box for tiny databases and fairly large ones. I use Ubuntu for most server stuff, so "setting it up" involves "apt-get install postgresql" or whatever. After that I create a user, create a db, and get to work. It's about 4 statements that I have to type in. MySQL is no more work, but I'm not sure why anybody would use it given that postgresql is as easy to set up and does far more with no effort.

Re:or sqlite

[VortexCortex]

phppgadmin is not comparable to phpmyadmin. It's a poor copy of myadmin.

Proving once again, the "no true Scotsman" argument can be applied to anything.

Re:or sqlite

[shutdown -p now]

Firebird is trivially embedded with almost zero configuration requirements, yet scales up well and is pretty feature rich. It's a very good option when you think Postgres is overkill.

Re:or sqlite

[StandardDeviant]

The default configs for postgres are set for a fairly small memory usage profile (*), which is fine if that's what you need (e.g. tiny vm or something that makes it a huge production to raise things like max shm size), but if you have sufficient ram, you can crank a hell of a lot more performance out of the engine by making the configs less conservative. This page is a good start: http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Tuning_Your_PostgreSQL_Server

Not that it's a priori *wrong* to run with the defaults, it'll still work just fine, but once you start having significant traffic or complicated queries you'll be happier if it more fully uses the system resources available.

(*) It's been a good while since I last had to take a pg instance from stock and tune it, but I very vaguely recall the default settings were on the order of a eight megabytes of ram usage.

Re: or sqlite

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Hey, that's not a REAL no true Scotsman fallacy...

Sign of OSS maturity

[Gothmolly]

Most MySQL/MariaDB users wont care at all about this, because there are millions of them who are not Slashdot or Amazon or Facebook - this DB silently powers millions of Internet connected things, and it's just a given that it works, performs, has fit-for-purpose stability. It's a sign of how far OSS has come when people have the luxury of quibbling over WHICH free, capable DB they want to base their business model on.

Free migration then?

[dutchwhizzman]

Maybe Postgres is a better DB in a theoretical way. It could be that in a brand new design for an application, it will be better in practice as well. However, if you run existing code or use an "off the shelf" open source application, chances are, it will be tested and developed on MySQL/MariaDB and not on Postgres. Until the choice is just as easy to make as the choice for either MySQL or MariaDB, I doubt it's "better" for 90+% of all MariaDB/MySQL users. Those users have a choice for either something that works, or something that will need a lot of porting and testing done. It may seem small and insignificant to Postgres experts to do that, but to those 90+%, it ishttp://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/05/05/2050220/there-is-no-reason-at-all-to-use-mysql-mariadb-mysql-founder-michael-widenius?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed# most likely far beyond their capabilities, probably cost prohibitive and in a lot of cases just not an option at all.

Re:Free migration then?

[rnturn]

``However, if you run existing code or use an "off the shelf" open source application, chances are, it will be tested and developed on MySQL/MariaDB and not on Postgres.''

That was my experience back when I was looking for web site software a few years ago. It's not so much that the "off the shelf" application hasn't been tested against PostgreSQL but it's almost certain that the developers only considered MySQL, taken advantage of non-standard SQL statements that are available in MySQL, and locked users into using only that database. I downloaded untold numbers of web site packages and found that most of them had used things like MySQL's "REPLACE" statement which meant they wouldn't be useful in my existing PostgreSQL environment without significant reworking. Standards, shmandards.

Ideally, it'd be nice if more developers would write their application to use some of the database abstraction layers that are out there (PEAR, ADOdb, etc.). At least then users would be able to merely use the database they may already have installed.

There Is No Reason At All To Use MySQL..

[JoeCommodore]

My reason is because there is no compelling reason right now for me to switch. Once it is in my next Ubuntu upgrade or my ISP switches to it then I'll do so as well.

Re:First

[wmac1]

Michael Widenius has benefited from gathering millions of developers around his product and letting them down.

He cannot sell source code of MariaDB this time, but he still can sell the brand name and the community which has trusted him again to earn another fortune. Fool me once, full me twice...

Postgres has a poor toolset

[mveloso]

The main reason to stay away from PostgreSQL is its toolset. Specifically, it's almost impossible to find a tool that allows you to analyze and tune it's performance. I say 'almost' because there may be one out there that I haven't found...but I've looked on and off for years, with no results.

For mysql there's lots of tools, like jetprofiler. For oracle you can pay. For SQLite, well, who cares. For psql, it's (as one website put it) a black art. Do you really want that as your back end?

Re:Postgres has a poor toolset

[ducomputergeek]

Have you not looked at the enterprise DB folks? A few years ago I was working on a project that started out using MySQL because MySQL was everywhere and initially it was for a single store. Then that became 50 and then 200 and we ran into some interesting problems with MySQL. Long story short, we ported the backend to PostgreSQL in a couple weeks and then ran for another three years processing tens of thousands of transactions a day without further hiccups from the database before we sold the company. The plan originally was to use PostgreSQL and then migrate to DB2 at some point once the revenue was coming in. Even when we reach that point PostgreSQL was handling everything we threw at it and we did hire Enterprise DB to come in and tune the database set up since we didn't have and couldn't afford to hire a DBA full-time at that point. IIRC they had a pretty decent toolset that we used there after, but it wasn't free as in beer or speech.

Re:Postgres has a poor toolset

[TheRealMindChild]

I'm calling liar. No one on purpose MOVES to db2

Re:Postgres has a poor toolset

[greg1104]

The performance analysis tools for PostgreSQL are still rough, but they're coming out stronger now than ever before. The old slow query profiling approach is based on database log files, and the pgbadger tool has gotten a lot of improvements in the last year to take the lead in that area. Some web app providers have added PostgreSQL data collection and visualization to the products recently, Datadog is a good example, they even run Postgres internally.

Last year's PostgreSQL 9.2 added a built-in query profiling feature via an improved pg_stat_statements module. That makes it relatively easy to see what queries are taking up time on the server, in a way that matches similar statements based on underlying their query plan. I wrote a sort of call to arms to suggest how the next generation of analysis tools can leverage that in Beyond Query Logging.

You are correct that no one has really grabbed ahold of this area and put together a really easy to use tool set around it. All of the hard to construct pieces needed are in place now, and my list of goals for this year's 9.3 development includes pushing the tuning methodology outlined in my High Performance PostgreSQL 9.0 book into some reference tool implementations. The idea that this is a "black art" is coming from consultants who want you to be intimidated. People who want to understand how things work can read my book, and then wander out to confidently build terabyte size databases. I talk with new people who have done just that every week now.

Re:Uh, what?

[BitZtream]

and being purely selfish with ZFS is just nauseating anymore.

Uhm, your saying that its Oracles fault Sun and many other people dont' like the viral nature of GPL and intentionally licensed the software in such a way that prevents your silly fanboy license from being able to leech it? You're saying that its okay for you to have software your way ... but not for anyone else to be free to have it their own way.

You're just another one of the freeloaders. Any talk about liberty is just bullshit your spewing to hide the truth.

My OS has been using ZFS for years without any problems, stop your whining, you got what you intended out of your license. GPL is incompatible with ZFS, not the other way around. Get a clue

Yada Yada Yada.. More of the same drivel.

[FlyingGuy]

98% of "web Programmers" wouldn't know a good database if it dragged them out of the parents basement and gave them a blow job.

I would not recommend using Oracle to run a simple web site. It is complete over kill. I would not recommend using MySQL / Maria to run the VISA processing center either.

99.9% of application builders do not even know the value of a good, much less great, DB engine and that is proven out time and time again when you look at their DB schema and all you see are tables. They all insist on doing EVERYTHING on the front end and never get , even when advised about, the amount of power that DB's like Oracle, PostGres, MS-SQL, DB2 and even MySQL have these days. One well written Stored Procedure ( Oracle Speak ). Package ( Oracle Speak ), function ( PostGres Speak ) or Procedure ( MySQL/ MS-SQL Speak ) can eliminate 1000's of lines of java, python, ruby, php ( pick your language ) front end code, and perform the function 1000x faster and more reliably.

Every tool has its use. When you need massive scaleibility, up time in the 5 9's category and support RIGHT FUCKING NOW WITH AN ACTUAL ENGINEER when you dial the toll free number 24/7/365 you get the big dogs like Oracle,MS-SQL or DB2. If those factors are less important then you have other choices like Postgres ( they REALLY need to fix the TXID issue ) which is very powerful but lacks the kind of SLA's that you can get with Oracle / Microsoft. If just getting feedback from the support community is fine the MySQL / Maria are fine choices.

I design VERY large databases that push DB's to their limits. Google had to design their own because nothing off the shelf or even from the FOOS community could handle their requirements but it takes a small army to deal with it and most companies don't have the resources or don't want to have that many people on their payroll.

The bottom line is use the DB that fits your requirements, fits your budget and has the support organization around it so when you have a problem your requirements are met, and it really does not matter who you get it from. Don't be religious about it. ALL of these companies are trying to build the best product to serve their market and that is the bottom line.

Michael Widenius is nothing but a little bitch. He sold his DB to sun for how much again? 1 BILLION dollars I think it was. Now shut the fuck up, go sit on your riches and do MariaDB if you want but stop bitching about what happened to MySQL because he YOU are the idiot who cashed in and sold out.

Speaking of economic interest...

[Locke2005]

Oracle has a HUGE economic interest in making sure MySQL sucks bad enough that customers buy Oracle databases instead.

Re:First

[Anonymous Coward]

Fool me once, full me twice...

...empty me the third time?

Re:First

[prionic6]

You meant to say:

fool me once, shame on
shame on you.
Fool me
you can't get fooled again