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Will Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Stay With MySQL?

littlekorea writes "The world's largest web-scale users of MySQL have committed to one further upgrade to the Oracle-controlled database — but Facebook and Twitter are also eyeing off more open options from MariaDB and cheaper options from the NoSQL community. Who will pay for MySQL enterprise licenses into the future?"

245 comments

  1. Licenses are a scam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just sell us the damn software and nobody gets hurt.

    1. Re:Licenses are a scam by gagol · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It should be like cars, you can rent and pay base fee plus usage, or buy it and its yours.

      --
      Tomorrow is another day...
    2. Re:Licenses are a scam by gagol · · Score: 1

      As far as car analogies, this is the best ì cam come up with at this hour... be my guest!

      --
      Tomorrow is another day...
    3. Re:Licenses are a scam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was not aware that when I buy a car I also get the license to recreate it.

      Sweet.

    4. Re:Licenses are a scam by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 1

      Well, if you change enough about it, you will also have to get a type safety permit for it (at least on this side of the Pond). This includes submitting another item for the crash test. So apart from legal issues with the manufacturer, you may have issues with your government.

      --
      Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
    5. Re:Licenses are a scam by gagol · · Score: 1

      Like Hyundai copying Honda on the cheap?

      --
      Tomorrow is another day...
  2. and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... PostgreSQL is over in the corner, saying, "Hey guys! I'm open! I'm open!"

    But no one throws the ball the Postgres. Because no one like Postgres.

    So Postgres goes home and does some homework.

    1. Re:and so meanwhile... by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Funny, but not actually true.

      We used to use MySQL unless a customer demanded Oracle. Now we've switched to Postgres, because MySQL's future is so hazy and we typically have to support these systems for ten years or more.

    2. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      PostgreSQL's biggest disadvantage over MariaDB is that it's not a drop-in replacement for MySQL.

    3. Re: and so meanwhile... by Simon+Brooke · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The real joke of this is that Postgres has been, by any measure, a better database than MySQL for twenty years. Back in the early 1990s when we were running on i386s and Sparcs, there was some argument for using MySQL because (in those days) the fact that it didn't have proper transactions and proper reverential integrity, it was faster for simple queries from single tables. Now, even that isn't true any more. Postgres is just the best engineered RDBMS out there bar none, and it's free.

      --
      I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
    4. Re:and so meanwhile... by diemuzi · · Score: 1

      We drop mySQL long ago due to fact that Oracle as a whole sucks! I truly believe they really don't care about their users. pgSQL is the way to go. Still and always will be stable with by far more options than what mySQL will ever dream about.

    5. Re: and so meanwhile... by buchner.johannes · · Score: 5, Funny

      Maybe Postgres lacks discoverability?

      --
      NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
    6. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... PostgreSQL is over in the corner, saying, "Hey guys! I'm open! I'm open!"

      But no one throws the ball the Postgres. Because no one like Postgres.

      Maybe becaus Postgres is an arrogant asshole that thinks he can tell the other kids how to play the game ("how dare you to play with me, root"), and pouts until you play by his rules...?

    7. Re:and so meanwhile... by XaXXon · · Score: 1

      mysql's future isn't hazy. It's all about mariadb.. but they're not really different.

    8. Re: and so meanwhile... by CODiNE · · Score: 1

      Why is this? I checked their website, it's not a 1990's throwback. I remember the Postgres vs MySQL arguments from back in the day.

      Is their syntax weird? Is there some painfully annoying thing about it? Were there different licenses in the past causing a strong divide which are no longer relevant? Was something done years ago which alienated a large chunk of the community? How did MySQL get such critical mass?

      --
      Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
    9. Re:and so meanwhile... by pspahn · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That sounds like more of a disadvantage of the application itself rather than the DB platform.

      This is 2013... use an ORM.

      --
      Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
    10. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How did MySQL get such critical mass?

      Probably the main reason is that it has a "design philosophy" of "if you can't do what the user wants, better to do something and say it's all OK than to give an error", which some people mistake for ease of use.

    11. Re: and so meanwhile... by richlv · · Score: 1

      no, the real joke is that any story about mysql on slashdot gets 3 times more comments about postgresql :)
      it's fairly annoying, i must admit

      --
      Rich
    12. Re: and so meanwhile... by emilper · · Score: 2

      back in the early 90 MySQL and Postgresql did not exist

    13. Re: and so meanwhile... by SQLGuru · · Score: 5, Funny

      BetaMax vs VHS. Blu-ray vs HD-DVD.

      Obviously it's because the porn industry chose MySQL.

    14. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No, the real joke is Firebird DB is better than both MySQL and Postgres in terms of speed and disk usage.

      Nobody uses it though. Firebird is to MySQL as BSD is to Linux. That is, it had some commercial/legal "complications" in the beginning of its life that have forever made it a loser despite being better.

    15. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At the time, linux dweebs only cared about performance. Worrying about reliability and correctness and transaction isolation was all stuffy big corporate thinking that young hip dynamic linux types didn't want.

      If anything, the syntax of MySQL is weird. No other SQL database required an explicit 'lock-reread-unlock' approach.

    16. Re: and so meanwhile... by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      I don't know why you say that. I discovered it years ago!

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    17. Re: and so meanwhile... by segedunum · · Score: 1

      I know. The inertia with MySQL is just pain ridiculous. I'm currently weening the company I work for off MySQL because we're starting to get amounts of data that is necessitating ridiculous sharding frameworks in MySQL with implications for applications, and everyone seems to think this is fine and a sign that everything is OK. I've heard it all - "MySQL is what I know", "Does Postgres have support for bulk loading", "We don't need what Postgres provides, we can do all that in MySQL"........

      The answer to everything with MySQL is yet more sharding, more complexity and hiving more and more stuff into temporary tables with less rows in them. But hey, MySQL is perfectly fine and it has great performance!

    18. Re:and so meanwhile... by Maow · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think what's missing is an easy upgrade path from MySQL to PostgreSQL.

      For example:

      • * mysqldump | psql doesn't work even with --compatibe=postgresql: ints have precision (int(11)) and comments don't work the same
      • * Inside psql there isn't a handy "show create table" feature (that I've found)
      • * No way to "use dbname" for switching DBs inside psql - must quit and restart with different dbname
      • * Issues with double quotes vs single quotes vs ticks - no opinion on which is best way to go but would be nice if a translation were available
      • * The commands aren't as easily memorable: \d vs show tables: another area where some compatibility would be nice. I kind of prefer the show tables, show databases, show create table style instead of \d, \l, \(can't do it in psql, use pg_dump)

      Those are some things off of the top of my head.

      Makes it so much more work to switch - each dumped table must be manually tweaked to load into psql.

      I'm playing with it now, and growing more comfortable with psql but not sure I'm going to dump, edit, import all tables in all|any databases so I can have... 2 db servers running on my box.

      I'm itching for a good reason to switch.

      It's a shame that the new recently that Google is dropping MySQL didn't end with "and they're going to use Postgres" -- they have the resources to make a conversion suite / patches that would make it easy for a large scale adoption to occur.

    19. Re: and so meanwhile... by gman003 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Uh, Postgres has all the standard GRANT and REVOKE, plus some things I don't immediately recall MySQL supporting. This support goes back at least to 7.3, which is a decade old. From what I can tell from the changelogs, looks like they started adding that around 1997 in 6.0.

      I'll also note that PostgreSQL places a lot of importance on following the standards - they seem to support far more things than MySQL. In fact, looking at their "list of unsupported SQL features", it seems the bulk of them are "embedded [outdated programming language]" of one sort or another, or fancy XML stuff.

    20. Re: and so meanwhile... by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      doesn't do users? in what sense? doesn't do network connections? in what sense?

      care to elaborate? the little try I did with postgres couple of years back sure seemed to..

      from what I gather most people who choose mysql chose it because it was in their how to start web programming book.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    21. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Good thing it's not the truth, then. If there was ever a version of Postgres that didn't support users and network connections, it was so long ago as to be entirely irrelevant (older than 1995, the oldest version with release notes available on the website), and such an ancient version would have had plenty of other disadvantages too.

    22. Re: and so meanwhile... by hibiki_r · · Score: 5, Insightful

      MySQL got its critical mass by it's easy, tight integration built into PHP. Any random college student could build a website backed by a database pretty quickly. It was a total failure to anyone that wanted to do serious work with it, but serious work was never an issue. As those college students entered the workforce, they tried to keep the tools they learned. People worked around their tech's limitations until new versions added it in, instead of migrating to competitors.

      So it was a perfect storm or filling a niche for a community that just kept growing.

    23. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You are not a real programmer aren't you? ORM is mapping table row and its relations to an object thus Object Relation Mapping. It doe not do anything to with accessing database itself. That is what adapters are for or PDO.

    24. Re:and so meanwhile... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 3, Informative

      "Now we've switched to Postgres, because MySQL's future is so hazy..."

      It's no more hazy than it was when Oracle took it over. The MariaDB project is largely run by ex-MySQL developers... where's the problem? If anything, it was Oracle that muddied the waters. Now things are getting BACK on track.

      I like Postgres in some ways, but it has some significant deviations from standard SQL syntax, and other idiosyncracies.

      For me (I'm not doing anything "enterprise" at the moment), the slight performance gain of Postgres is not worth putting up with its oddities.

    25. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny, but not actually true.

      It's not true because YOU use it in your unknown home-brew web project?

    26. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Postgres has been, by any measure, a better database than MySQL

      By most measures, you're right. But MySQL has always been somewhat more accessible than Postgres. It works better in shared hosting environments and it's easier for a beginner to go from nothing to executing queries. IMHO, MySQL has succeeded primarily because it let people who have no business running databases run a database.

    27. Re: and so meanwhile... by greg1104 · · Score: 1

      PostgreSQL didn't release a solid Windows version until 2005. That's the biggest reason why MySQL adoption outpaced it for so long, but the plentiful PHP/MySQL examples certainly contributed too.

    28. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean you didn't switch because MySQL is a shit database, and has always been?

    29. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Postgres is just the best engineered RDBMS out there bar none, and it's free. ...And yet we all hate it, and those who try to talk it up on /. just annoy us because we still don't like it.

    30. Re:and so meanwhile... by greg1104 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As long as MariaDB is requiring copyright assignment, there's every reason to believe it will be sold off again the same way MySQL was. The FSF gets away with that for GNU projects because they've never abused contributor trust before. Monty is no FSF, and there's no reason believe MariaDB will remain outside of commercial control any better than MySQL did. I can't believe people are falling for the same trick again.

      PostgreSQL aims for SQL standards conformance as much as possible. It's hard sometimes due to the difficulty of participating in the standard process. The idea that MySQL does a better job in that area is kind of odd though. You'll have to list some sample Postgres "oddities" to be credible with that claim.

    31. Re:and so meanwhile... by greg1104 · · Score: 5, Funny

      PostgreSQL's biggest disadvantage over MariaDB is that it's not a drop-in replacement for MySQL.

      Postgres has a blackhole engine that loses data in unpredictable ways now. But that only emulates parts of MyISAM.

    32. Re:and so meanwhile... by pspahn · · Score: 1

      Yes, thank you. PDO was what I was going for. Do you realize how many acronyms are in my brain? It's not like I said "use an ACL" or something unrelated.

      No, I'm not a real programmer, I'm just someone who writes code that sells stuff, which includes being savvy in so many areas that sometimes I mix up my acronyms. This is beneficial, however, since if I was a "real programmer" I wouldn't have the slightest clue how to sell the products that I sell (not without a minor in horticulture or something, at the very least).

      --
      Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
    33. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Some fair points, but...

      * mysqldump | psql doesn't work even with --compatibe=postgresql: ints have precision (int(11)) and comments don't work the same

      If MySQL has a --compatible=postgresql option that doesn't actually produce PostgreSQL-compatible output, then that's pretty unambiguously MySQL's fault, and not something that PostgreSQL can do a great deal about.

      No way to "use dbname" for switching DBs inside psql - must quit and restart with different dbname

      \connect, or alternatively, use schemas instead of databases and SET SEARCH_PATH.

      Issues with double quotes vs single quotes vs ticks - no opinion on which is best way to go but would be nice if a translation were available

      MySQL being wildly non-standard.

    34. Re: and so meanwhile... by turbidostato · · Score: 1

      "How did MySQL get such critical mass?"

      Because it had a very good entry curve for developers that didn't know any better.

      More or less like PHP (it's no chance that they got popular together).

    35. Re: and so meanwhile... by EETech1 · · Score: 1

      That's funny right there....

    36. Re: and so meanwhile... by turbidostato · · Score: 1

      "The primary arguments against it traditionally [...] for business customers have been that it doesn't do users/permissions or network connections."

      W-H-A-T!!!???

      Where do you have heard something so out of reality, boy?

      "So, really its more like a stand-alone flat-file database handler like Berekly DB or SQLite that just happens to have some high-end query syntax."

      Ok, ok, I see, you are just trolling by turning old MySQL-related arguments to PostgreSQL.

      Have a nice day.

    37. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      PDO

      "real" programmers indeed, your php is showing ;)

    38. Re:and so meanwhile... by Maow · · Score: 1

      Some fair points, but...

      * mysqldump | psql doesn't work even with --compatibe=postgresql: ints have precision (int(11)) and comments don't work the same

      If MySQL has a --compatible=postgresql option that doesn't actually produce PostgreSQL-compatible output, then that's pretty unambiguously MySQL's fault, and not something that PostgreSQL can do a great deal about.

      True, and I'm certainly not putting blame on Postgres, but it would be nice if they had a pg_mysql_import_from_dump as MySQL's compatibility is b0rked.

      I see various scripts out there, on Github for example, that claim to aid in the transfer. But it seems the consensus that manual fiddling is required. Perhaps I should make a name for myself by building something that eases the process. A "pg_mysql_import_from_dump" as it were.

      No way to "use dbname" for switching DBs inside psql - must quit and restart with different dbname

      \connect, or alternatively, use schemas instead of databases and SET SEARCH_PATH.

      Ah, good idea. Schemas are an option but if transferring a, say, Drupal install over, one doesn't want to have to ensure that the schema is prepended onto all SQL. I prefer to have individual DBs. So when in psql, I shall try \connect. And... it works perfectly. Thank you.

      Issues with double quotes vs single quotes vs ticks - no opinion on which is best way to go but would be nice if a translation were available

      MySQL being wildly non-standard.

      Again, not disagreeing.

    39. Re:and so meanwhile... by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What I don't get is this...why does anybody think MariaDB is ANY safer? I mean its still run by old Monty, right? The guy that sold MySQL out from under the community to Oracle in the first place? And don't he still require that ALL code contributed have the rights signed over to him?

      If he fools you once? Shame on him. If he fools you twice? You are an idiot that deserve what you get.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    40. Re:and so meanwhile... by greg1104 · · Score: 1

      There's no direct replacement for SHOW CREATE TABLE. There are two similar things and a tool to do it though:

      -Run CREATE TABLE y AS SELECT * FROM x LIMIT 0; That will make you another table just like the one you have, but with no data in it. That only gets you an exact duplicate, it doesn't show you the DDL or allow changing it in the middle. (You can then ALTER TABLE the result though, for 'like this but with X different' cases)
      -pg_dump with the options to only dump the schema. You'll have to dig the definition out of the dump.
      -pgadmin3 shows the SQL needed to re-create a table when you look at it in the GUI.

      Enough people use pgadmin3 that there's not a lot of demand for cloning this MySQL-ism exactly. Just like \d instead of SHOW TABLE and learning that you connect to new databases in psql with \c, it's not a long-term pain point. Ditto for conversions, which hurt because Postgres is a lot more strict in what it will accept. That's a feature, not a bug.

    41. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I thought I remembered Postgres forcing you to deal with sequences manually while MySQL had AUTOINCREMENT. I seem to remember that being one of the simplicity sticking points for a long time but I could be wrong.

    42. Re: and so meanwhile... by Narcocide · · Score: 1

      It only seemed to support those features because they were provided as bolt-on 3rd party mods. Officially supported though they were not (*at least* as late as 2002) and for board-room business decisions that is all the difference that matters.

    43. Re: and so meanwhile... by theskipper · · Score: 1

      The type is 'serial' and wraps the creation of a sequence.

    44. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Since when do boards of directors worry about trivial details like what database their company's products use?

    45. Re: and so meanwhile... by Maow · · Score: 1

      "" No way to "use dbname" for switching DBs inside psql - must quit and restart with different dbname ""

      You should STFU and RTFM before throwing FUD. A simple \c dbname does the trick. (The c stands for connect if you need a fucking mnemonic)

      Too late, asswipe, the \connect trick was pointed out long ago by someone who is not suffering douche-bag-itis. Also pointed out reasonably by Greg.

      It's a tough choice: remain ignorant or learn from someone like you. Guess it isn't really a choice - I learnt from the user above and you brought... nothing.

      Hell, you can't even quote properly!

    46. Re: and so meanwhile... by Narcocide · · Score: 1

      Most companies that have been around longer than 2 weeks.

    47. Re: and so meanwhile... by Narcocide · · Score: 1

      The part all the astro turfing zealot down-modders don't get is that I'm not trying to actually shit on PostgreSQL I'm simply accurately answering the actual question, which is why PostgreSQL never gained the traction MySQL did. These are important issues to the executives no matter what the script kiddies and junior developers think. Another important issue was the willingness of MySQL to offer multiple license terms. They offered GPL for the education/small business crowd, and they offered a commercial license for companies that would only consider a solution that offered commercial support. If i recall, PostgreSQL offered neither commercial support nor even an open source license that had the street-cred benefit of having being adopted by other projects.

    48. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And developers are the ones who should be making the corporate database choices.

    49. Re:and so meanwhile... by VortexCortex · · Score: 1

      Ah, but fool me Three Times? Yes, then you see it's all part of my master plan...

      Creating DBA Job Security one migration at a time.

    50. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you are already extrapolating, why don't you mention that he can continue under a new name again? sell, rename, sell, rename, sell, rename...

    51. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And pg users are tired of hearing about MySQL. We were unimpressed with it 15 years ago, and we're still unimpressed with it. In fact it still hasn't reached the quality that pg had 15 years ago. But at least it has added support for triggers, stored procedures, and at least limited transactions.

    52. Re: and so meanwhile... by rkcth · · Score: 1

      I switched from MySQL to PostgreSQL and converted a 50,000 line program to boot. We used schemes to match the way MySQL uses databases (schemes are much closer to MySQL databases than the thing called databases are). Also I use phong admin so I don't use the SQL commands you mentioned. What an inefficient use of time!

    53. Re:and so meanwhile... by pspahn · · Score: 1

      Yes, thank you. And thanks for calling me a badass.

      --
      Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
    54. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      MySQL got its critical mass by it's easy, tight integration built into PHP

      I find this bit of ignorance hilarious as mysql's php interface very closely mimicks the libpq interface

    55. Re: and so meanwhile... by pspahn · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure that "know any better" is all that relevant. Sure, at this point there are tons of enterprise level clusterfucks built on PHP. Don't get me wrong about that... though, it certainly fills a void when robustness is less of a concern.

      --
      Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
    56. Re: and so meanwhile... by MikeBabcock · · Score: 1

      Back when I started with MySQL, it was faster to configure, easier to set up, and didn't require nightly maintenance cycles.

      Those all make a big difference for early rapid development.

      --
      - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
    57. Re:and so meanwhile... by binarylarry · · Score: 1

      Don't worry. I'm sure if Monty sells it, he'll soon fork it again and Chodely with switch to MarioDB after Facebook tries to extract money from their new database purchase.

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    58. Re: and so meanwhile... by qzzpjs · · Score: 1

      The network connections one has some merit. The normal install of PostgreSQL last time I checked does not enable the TCP listener and you have to edit the conf file to allow network access and the startup scripts to add the comand line option for it.

      This is a major pain if you're trying to tell a customer of your application how to do the install. You don't have to do this kind of extra configuration with any other database system just to get your app to connect.

    59. Re: and so meanwhile... by turbidostato · · Score: 2

      "The network connections one has some merit."

      "Doesn't support" and "it doesn't configure itself by default to be cracked ala red worm" are quite different things. By the way, all sane installers of MySQL do exactly the same thing.

    60. Re: and so meanwhile... by richlv · · Score: 1

      i am using both a bit, although i'm using mysql more. if you are unimpressed with mysql, why do you have to troll every story about it ? surely you can discuss pg in the articles about pg... current behaviour makes pg advocates look bad (especially as most comments here are by anonymous cowards)

      --
      Rich
    61. Re:and so meanwhile... by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 2

      No way to "use dbname" for switching DBs inside psql - must quit and restart with different dbname

      /c dbname

      --
      Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
    62. Re:and so meanwhile... by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 3, Insightful

      \c obviously

      --
      Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
    63. Re: and so meanwhile... by turbidostato · · Score: 1

      "I'm not sure that "know any better" is all that relevant"

      It is. Without unknowledgeable developers, neither PHP nor MySQL would have had the slightest chance.

    64. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... PostgreSQL is over in the corner, saying, "Hey guys! I'm open! I'm open!"

      But no one throws the ball the Postgres. Because no one like Postgres.

      So Postgres goes home and does some homework.

      It is cause every time I throw the ball to Postgres he drops it, I end up having to change the way I throw the ball. That and by the time I'm pulling my hair out, the coach walks by and asks me how many more training sessions I'll have to spend to get the rest of the team to throw correctly to Postgres.

      But when he does catch the ball, he sure does throw it to the next player it faster then that Mysql guy.

    65. Re: and so meanwhile... by qzzpjs · · Score: 1

      The code red worm was a specific problem with SQL Server and was pretty nasty, but not a reason to cause installers to stop listening on the network altogether by default. I guess in the open source world they just assume your app and database will always be located on the same server. Other vendors like Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft, etc know that databases usually get placed on dedicated servers which means the network should work by default.

      I guess I just dislike getting application support calls because people couldn't get the app to connect to its back end database automatically. Having to ask them if they made all the cryptic changes to cryptic configuration files they don't understand or should never have had to look at in the first place is a pain in the neck. Things should just work out of the box AND still be safe.

    66. Re: and so meanwhile... by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      Most of these sites started small and then gradually grew. When the choice of what DB to use was made there probablly were only one or two people involved. The idea guy and the coder (who may or may not be the same person).

      By the time the project becomes big enough for the issues with mysql to become apparent the app has already been built arround that platform. So the company (which has likely grown to more than two people at this point) has to choose between either keeping piling on the hacks to keep things running with mysql or split their resources between porting to a new DB and keeping the lights on in the meantime.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    67. Re:and so meanwhile... by ianare · · Score: 3, Informative

      I like Postgres in some ways, but it has some significant deviations from standard SQL syntax, and other idiosyncracies.

      Strange you would mention that, one of the reasons I've switched to PostgreSQL (and never looked back) is because it more closesly follows the SQL standard and has many less "gotchas" and bugs than MySQL (boolean is actually an int field, reset counter on increment, etc).

      When people complain about Postgres' "non-standard SQL", this usually comes from those that have only used MySQL and think it's the standard.

      About the only technical advantage MySQL has over Postgres is an easier setup, and generally better performance out of the box (before any tuning).

    68. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not to mention being a performance hog and making it much much faster to tune your DB queries.

    69. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're still left with the issue that other than the core SQL standard there's a superset of DB-specific features. As an example mysql's last insert id won't work if you switch to using postgresql, and that'll break 90% of applications written for mysql.

    70. Re:and so meanwhile... by Chrisq · · Score: 1

      About the only technical advantage MySQL has over Postgres is an easier setup, and generally better performance out of the box (before any tuning).

      I think that clustering on Postgres is so obscure as to frighten off all but the most knowledgeable (or foolhardy idiots). You are presented with a list of do it yourself options, but no concrete recommendations. Comments like "pgpool 1/2 is a reasonable solution. it's statement level replication, which has some downsides, but is good for certain things" probably only help if you know exactly what you want already!

    71. Re: and so meanwhile... by jabuzz · · Score: 0

      How did MySQL get such critical mass?

      That's easy and everyone posting answers is dead wrong. MySQL got critical mass because it was the ONLY FREE database that did SQL. Back in the dim and distant past there was mSQL which was only free for open source applications, MySQL which was free and did SQL but was rather rubbish and Postgres which was also free but did not do SQL, but QUEL instead.

      Development on MySQL picked up to the point where it was a competitor and there was a transition away from mSQL to MySQL with Postgres being ignored because it did not do SQL. By the time the query engine in Postgres had been replaced with SQL and stabilized to something useful MySQL had gained the momentum and the rest is history.

    72. Re: and so meanwhile... by jabuzz · · Score: 1

      Go back further to when MySQL got momentum and Postgres did not do SQL *AT ALL*. Want a free database that did SQL, well MySQL was at one point your *ONLY* choice.

    73. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wish someone would mod the parent up.. The real reason I don't use Postgres is "I just don't like it." Just like there are plenty of well engineered programming languages that I too simply don't like. It is a gut feeling.

    74. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The "problem" with Postgresql is the Postgresql developers/team are more likely to present a realistic picture of things.

      Those who really know about clustering will know it's all a bunch of compromises.

      Just because MySQL fans paint a rosier picture doesn't mean the MySQL situation is really that much better:
      http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=25543
      https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/mysql-cluster-replication-issues.html

      MySQL has had replication as a built-in for a long time, and I encountered such a system at work when it was 3.x. BUT the clustering system seemed to cause more problems than it solved - stuff kept getting out of sync or the syncing completely stops. Was someone else's job to maintain it, but I had to help fix it from time to time...

      Might be better now, but point is MySQL implied it was fine back in 3.x despite its crappiness.

    75. Re: and so meanwhile... by TheLink · · Score: 1

      and guess what happened with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn?

      --
    76. Re:and so meanwhile... by Chrisq · · Score: 2

      The "problem" with Postgresql is the Postgresql developers/team are more likely to present a realistic picture of things.

      Those who really know about clustering will know it's all a bunch of compromises.

      Just because MySQL fans paint a rosier picture doesn't mean the MySQL situation is really that much better: http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=25543 https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/mysql-cluster-replication-issues.html

      MySQL has had replication as a built-in for a long time, and I encountered such a system at work when it was 3.x. BUT the clustering system seemed to cause more problems than it solved - stuff kept getting out of sync or the syncing completely stops. Was someone else's job to maintain it, but I had to help fix it from time to time...

      Might be better now, but point is MySQL implied it was fine back in 3.x despite its crappiness.

      I don't doubt what you say (I don't have the expertise to judge it) but I should have pointed out that the number of people who really need clustering (as opposed to hot or warm backup) is very small. We realised that beefier hardware with hot backup was a much easier solution. Our DB expert tells me that the number of people who need a scalable conventional SQL cluster is getting to be a really small niche, with single-node systems improving and eating into the bottom half and NOSQL systems eating into the top.

    77. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And developers are the ones who should be making the corporate database choices.

      Um, yes? Well, maybe in cooperation with the sysadmins, if those are different people. And preferably ones competent enough not to choose MySQL, but the basic point stands. If you let management make technical decisions, or really any decisions that they're not personally responsible for implementing, they'll chose the one whose salesman has the fanciest suit or took them to the most expensive restaurant.

    78. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Back when I started with MySQL, it was faster to configure, easier to set up, and didn't require nightly maintenance cycles.

      Those all make a big difference for early rapid development.

      When I started with PostgreSQL, I knew nothing about databases and managed to get it set up just fine using only the bundled documentation. So either I'm a genius or it isn't difficult at all (or possibly both).

    79. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As ORMs do EVERYTHING!

      Esp magicificate legacy applications into using them.

      And all queries are SUPER FAST. So you never ever drop in SQL as the ORM has had a bout of stupidity or you have do implement a really complicated query. NEVER HAPPENS. EVER.

    80. Re: and so meanwhile... by inglorion_on_the_net · · Score: 3, Informative

      Go back further to when MySQL got momentum and Postgres did not do SQL *AT ALL*.

      [citation needed]

      Actually, let me get some citations for you, although they contradict your statement:

      From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postgresql

      In 1994, Berkeley graduate students Andrew Yu and Jolly Chen replaced the Ingres-based QUEL query language interpreter with one for the SQL query language

      From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysql

      The first version of MySQL appeared on 23 May 1995

      So it would appear that Postgres supported SQL before MySQL even existed.

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    81. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      but not a reason to cause installers to stop listening on the network altogether by default.

      Not enabling network listeners by default is, however, a pretty big part of "secure by default". When you decide to enable the network listener, you are already at the point in the config file where you choose which interfaces to listen on. Where as with everything enabled by default, figuring out how to limit which interfaces it is listening on is an extra step, one that won't be done in most cases.

    82. Re: and so meanwhile... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      My guess is that you weren't using Windows. On most *NIX platforms, installing either was pretty trivial. On Windows, however, MySQL had a point-and-click installer years before PostgreSQL worked reliably on the platform. For web developers working on Windows, this meant that if they wanted to install the same DB on their dev machine as on their deployment system, MySQL was a clear winner.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    83. Re:and so meanwhile... by Burning1 · · Score: 2

      The first lesson I learned from the book 'High Performance MySQL' is that one should never use an ORM. Optimizing for ORM queries is virtually impossible.

      http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7707976/php-and-mysql-high-traffic-solution

      FWIW: I notice in a later post you mention PDOs... Which look like they won't impact optimization strategies.

    84. Re: and so meanwhile... by Burning1 · · Score: 1

      So, basically... MySQL pulled a facebook?

    85. Re: and so meanwhile... by Burning1 · · Score: 1

      Or did facebook pull a MySQL?

    86. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The part all the astro turfing zealot down-modders don't get is that I'm not trying to actually shit on PostgreSQL

      The part that you fucking don't get is that you're SPEAKING UTTER SHITE. If you think what you're saying is true, post some evidence.

      As for "multiple licence terms", why would Postgres need that when the BSD-style licence already allows everything that anyone might reasonably want to do with it?

    87. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >Strange you would mention that, one of the reasons I've switched to PostgreSQL (and never looked back) is because it more closesly follows the SQL standard

      Please do explain, what actual real life benefits you get from this.

    88. Re:and so meanwhile... by jonbryce · · Score: 2

      That can only happen if they replace all the MySQL code with something completely different. MariaDB doesn't own the commercial rights to that because they sold it to a company now owned by Oracle, only the same GPL rights that everyone else has.

    89. Re:and so meanwhile... by greg1104 · · Score: 1

      All they need is a compelling set of new code to sell a business based on that. Every time someone contributes to MariaDB, they're building exactly what whey need to end up with something they can sell again.

    90. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks for the laugh about someone who uses MySQL but worries about PostgreSQL "idiosyncracies".

    91. Re: and so meanwhile... by darthgnu · · Score: 1

      That "design" philosophy turned out to be 100% compatible with PHP's. Crap tends to form clumps.

      --
      Freedom is strength, Ignorance is peace, War is slavery.
    92. Re:and so meanwhile... by bad-badtz-maru · · Score: 1

      He didn't sell it to Oracle, he sold it to Sun.

    93. Re: and so meanwhile... by bad-badtz-maru · · Score: 1

      PHP drove mysql's adoption, it had mysql db functions baked-in. PG was added later.

    94. Re: and so meanwhile... by bad-badtz-maru · · Score: 1

      Wow...

    95. Re:and so meanwhile... by bad-badtz-maru · · Score: 1

      "Issues with double quotes vs single quotes vs ticks" = someone writing code in 2013 that isn't using bound parameters.

    96. Re: and so meanwhile... by Admiral+Llama · · Score: 1

      You've obviously never used Informix.

    97. Re: and so meanwhile... by jp10558 · · Score: 1

      I thought most people on Windows used MSSQL - at least that seems the case in packaged software...

      --
      Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
    98. Re:and so meanwhile... by Admiral+Llama · · Score: 1

      And by MariaDB you mean that thing that's is a front-end for Percona XtraDB.

    99. Re:and so meanwhile... by Admiral+Llama · · Score: 1

      So go to Percona then. They're more conservative and safety oriented anyway.

    100. Re:and so meanwhile... by godefroi · · Score: 1

      MongoDB is web-scale, after all.

      --
      Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
    101. Re:and so meanwhile... by godefroi · · Score: 1

      Wait, you don't like Postgres because of syntax oddities, but you do like MySQL? Huh.

      --
      Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
    102. Re:and so meanwhile... by Admiral+Llama · · Score: 1

      If you care about data integrity then you're not running on MyISAM tables. There's a pretty long list of reasons not to use MyISAM tables, and frankly they're an outmoded relic except for a few edge cases. It's a bit of a straw man argument, and if you're going there then I get to point out that it wasn't until version 7.3 that you could alter the damn table in PG. Seven point three. That's like saying "Horray, we can do updates now. You don't have to delete and then insert your rows manually."

      7.3 was half a decade ago.

      Now, it's still kinda laughable that it took that long but it's really no longer a valid or fair argument. The fact that MyISAM is shit isn't a fair argument either. As an aside, MySQL has had blackhole since 2005 and it loses your data in a very predictable way. As insane as it sounds, it has its uses all the same as /dev/null.

    103. Re: and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How did MySQL get such critical mass?

      Probably the main reason is that it has a "design philosophy" of "if you can't do what the user wants, better to do something and say it's all OK than to give an error", which some people mistake for ease of use.

      Coincidentally, the same philosophy of PHP.

    104. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      • * [herp]
      • * [derp]
      • * [ermahgerd]
      • * [whargarbl]
      • * [herpa derp derp]

      Translation: I've never read the Postgres docs and I see no reason to start now!

    105. Re:and so meanwhile... by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Not the OP.

      In the world of ANSI SQL compliant DBs you write 99% ANSI SQL and flag any SQL beyond that with a comment.

      That makes it relatively easy to switch database engines.

      In a previous life, I wrote code to collect current conditions to initialize a electric grid simulation. I've hit every DB known to man (that's good enough to use keeping the grid running). I've never hit mySQL professionally. It's a POS.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    106. Re:and so meanwhile... by greg1104 · · Score: 1

      That was meant to be a joke about the ugly differences "drop in replacement" might require, rather than a straw man.

      If I were going to pick a still relevant way to criticize MySQL in this area, I'd point out that non-STRICT clients can insert data that's invalid when later STRICT clients try to do something with it. That's a small hole, but the fact that it's still there highlights how bolted on some of the MySQL integrity features are. You can still insert data and only later discover it's garbage even today, and for some people that's as bad as losing it altogether.

    107. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The article didn't say that at all. It said they were moving away from MySQL ENTERPRISE licensing. MariaDB rebases off of current MySQL. They're still using MySQL - just not paying Oracle licenses. Maybe Oracle should re-think the pricing model if it wants to keep customers. Maybe they don't want to keep customers....

    108. Re:and so meanwhile... by lgw · · Score: 2

      If you're starting a large-scale project from scratch, by all means design it for NoSQL (and find some way to deal with the transactions you still need - you'll probably still end up with a few normal DBs for lock tracking, as distributed locking is hard). That's fairly useless for existing large scale apps: basically everyone but Google is using sharding over SQL DBs, and you just can't "port" between those worlds.

      Eventually I expect all the big players to do from-scratch re-writes for the NoSQL world, but not as a response to MySQL swirling the drain. That's something you do once you're product is 10+ years old, but you still see enough future work that it's worth a re-write. No one's quite there yet with cloud stuff, and the first will be Google (already NoSQL) and Microsoft (which will be interesting to watch).

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    109. Re:and so meanwhile... by gnupun · · Score: 1

      As long as MariaDB is requiring copyright assignment, there's every reason to believe it will be sold off again the same way MySQL was.

      It's okay if he wants to sell it again as long as the developers who submitted production level code to MariaDB be given at least a small portion of the profits. Does the MCA cover profit distribution or does one person (or organization) get it all?

    110. Re:and so meanwhile... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      "As long as MariaDB is requiring copyright assignment, there's every reason to believe it will be sold off again the same way MySQL was."

      Except the page you link to specifically says they DON'T require it. They also say you can submit using the "new" BSD licence, which allows redistribution, and does NOT allow sale or profit, without permission of the author.

    111. Re:and so meanwhile... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      Oops. Link missing.

      The "new" BSD license.

      By the way: this new "5 minute delay" between comments SUCKS. I can't even post a correction to a comment without having to wait 5 minutes first. That's an eternity in Slashdot time.

    112. Re:and so meanwhile... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      "I've never hit mySQL professionally. It's a POS."

      Everybody is entitled to their opinion. But some very large enterprises use MySQL, and they don't think it's a POS.

    113. Re:and so meanwhile... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      What if they sell it to Oracle...?

    114. Re:and so meanwhile... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      "When people complain about Postgres' "non-standard SQL", this usually comes from those that have only used MySQL and think it's the standard."

      No, actually I made a mistake. It isn't the SQL that I don't like about Postgres, it's the administration. In my opinion, it's obscure and poorly documented. Oh, the documentation is THERE, for sure. But it's written poorly and seems to assume in many places that you have the same knowledge as the Postgres development team.

      I have frequently had to go to 3rd-party sources to find out how to do something, even after reading the "official" documentation.

    115. Re:and so meanwhile... by greg1104 · · Score: 2

      There were some contributors to MySQL AB code that were hired as employees. Other than that, community contributors got nothing from the eventual sale. MariaDB is structured the same way. The only way they share profits is if they're impressed enough to hire you. Otherwise community contributors got zero before, and so far all the evidence says they'll get zero if Monty sells out again.

    116. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Klingon version:
      Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, die ptauck.

    117. Re:and so meanwhile... by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      I'm willing to bet a bunch of people in the trenches know it's a POS and curse the decision every single day.

      Once you've coded around a bug, you have set that bug in code and you are stuck with it.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    118. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      if you're going there then I get to point out that it wasn't until version 7.3 that you could alter the damn table in PG.

      You would get to point it out, if it was actually true.

      Seven point three.

      Not really meaningful, given the versioning scheme.

      7.3 was half a decade ago.

      Wrong again.

    119. Re:and so meanwhile... by greg1104 · · Score: 1

      BSD style contributions are basically waiving all rights on your code, so of course they accept those too. It's functionally the same as putting your code in the public domain in this context, except for the copyright notice clause that only impacts the credits of the software. There's nothing in there restricting sale or profit: "This version allows unlimited redistribution for any purpose as long as its copyright notices and the license's disclaimers of warranty are maintained". "Any purpose" includes using your contribution in a derived work that's not open-source at all. That's the whole point of the BSD style licenses.

      The reason people like GPL licenses is that everyone involved is compelled to share all related code. If MariaDB creates a cool extension to the database, in a regular GPL situation they would need to share it under the GPL terms to people they sell it to. This is not a theoretical point, as things like Commercial Extensions for MySQL Enterprise Edition popped up at multiple points in the database's history, making up part of why the company had commercial value to sell. They were only able to create those but not share the source because they had full copyright ownership on all of the code.

      GPL with copyright assignment breaks the share with the community model, by letting the company who owns the copyright ignore those rules for the work they do. There's a long history of companies keeping a dual-licensed GPL codebase for commercial purposes like that, both from MySQL AB and companies like TrollTech. People used to give otherwise good open source contributors a free pass for making money this way. But Monty's past moves have been so bad for the MySQL community that there's this whole wasteful battle between Oracle MySQL and MariaDB going on, diluting the value of both projects. You can't really give him the benefit of the doubt here on what he intends to do with his license again.

    120. Re: and so meanwhile... by turbidostato · · Score: 1

      "I guess in the open source world they just assume your app and database will always be located on the same server."

      I guess that in the open source world they just assume the system administrator knows better than themselves about the running environment and, in the meantime, safe by default is the proper way to go.

      Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft, etc, on the other hand, I guess they just assume that the user paying the little fortunes their licenses require is a clear indication they must be absolutly stupid so better helping them even if that means -by their own stupidity, big problems later. Hey! that's a great opportunity to sell them "security" services and products on top of that!

    121. Re:and so meanwhile... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      "BSD style contributions are basically waiving all rights on your code, so of course they accept those too."

      No they aren't, and it says so right there in the quote on Wikipedia.

      The original author maintains copyright of the code, and nobody else can sell it for profit without the author's permission.

      If only MySQL had rights under the BSD license, then what you say would be true. But the original author has those rights, too. So it can't be sold out from under them.

    122. Re:and so meanwhile... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      "There's nothing in there restricting sale or profit: "This version allows unlimited redistribution for any purpose as long as its copyright notices and the license's disclaimers of warranty are maintained". "Any purpose" includes using your contribution in a derived work that's not open-source at all. That's the whole point of the BSD style licenses."

      You are referring to the OLD-style BSD license. Read the Wikipedia quote linked above. The NEW BSD license has a 3rd clause restricting sale for profit without permission.

    123. Re:and so meanwhile... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      " Once you've coded around a bug, you have set that bug in code and you are stuck with it."

      Name me one DBRMS that is bug-free. I've had to put up with plenty of swearing by Postgres users.

    124. Re:and so meanwhile... by Blackknight · · Score: 1

      A few perl scripts and your conversion is done. Yeah it's a pain to switch but it's not something you have to do every day.

    125. Re: and so meanwhile... by Xiaran · · Score: 1

      SQL server still doesnt default to a network listener on install.

    126. Re:and so meanwhile... by hobarrera · · Score: 1

      And what about the data? You still need to do migration. To the non-tecnical person, MariaDB is chearp, and Posgres is "different and expensive".

    127. Re:and so meanwhile... by greg1104 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I made no such quoting error--that was direct from the New BSD text on the Wikipedia page--and I can't make any sense of whatever it is you're claiming. The 3rd clause of the New BSD license is "Neither the name of the nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission". That puts no restrictions on the code, only on the identity of the contributor. It just says that if I contribute code, the project can't use my name and write "Greg says our project is awesome" simply because I contributed--not without my written permission. That's what endorsement/promotion means here. The BSD licenses have always had "endorse or promote" restriction text of this form in them, because the University of California @ Berkeley didn't want people to think a BSD license says they approve of a program.

      If you're reading any sort of profit or sale restriction out of that clause, you're very confused about what these licenses mean. I'd recommend Why you should use a BSD style license as a good piece comparing these licenses. Modified BSD License is more terse description of the same area, with a particularly easy to follow description of New BSD->GPL moves work.

      MariaDB picked New BSD as the alternate license because it's "GPL compatible". That means they can just slurp up any contributions under those terms without worrying about the copyright trail on that code at all. All they have to do is include the New BSD license in their source and binary distributions for those parts, not mention their contributors by name so they're not seen as endorsing that commercial version, and they're done. New BSD code gets assimilated trivially, GPL code comes in with copyright assignment, and therefore at all times MariaDB is uniquely able to sell derived products or the company itself with full ownership of any new code added--again.

    128. Re:and so meanwhile... by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      One of the first lessons I learned, ever, is that DB abstraction layers suck in general.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    129. Re: and so meanwhile... by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      A huge part of the answer is "Windows". PG really dropped the ball on that one.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    130. Re:and so meanwhile... by godefroi · · Score: 1

      Right, like I said, MongoDB is web-scale. You need web-scale. It has more GBs. You want the white one, with the wifis.

      --
      Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
    131. Re:and so meanwhile... by lgw · · Score: 1

      Poe's Law strikes again. You might be surprised how persuasive such arguments are at up-and-coming companies full of young engineers.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    132. Re:and so meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That bug was fixed nearly 7 years ago.

      The issues referenced by the second link have either been fixed, or are inherent in the architecture (and are described as such).

      So, as someone with a fairly intimate knowledge of the subject, and agreeing with you that it's largely a matter of compromises, I think you contradict yourself pretty much.

    133. Re:and so meanwhile... by Maow · · Score: 1

      "Issues with double quotes vs single quotes vs ticks" = someone writing code in 2013 that isn't using bound parameters.

      This isn't about using bound parameters. It's about encapsulating the data within the client app, not an external application. More a case of someone posting on Slashdot in 2013 about something that they don't remotely understand.

      It's about create table `tab1` (`name` varchar(20) default "" not null); being dumped via mysqldump but not loading in psql.

      For the record, mysqldump --no-data --compatible=postgresql is how to get properly-quoted fields for table (re-)creation.

      It's about COMMENT ON COLUMN table.column IS "a comment"; not working because double quotes have special meaning: single quotes required.

      So, now you're less ignorant than you were before posting. You're welcome.

    134. Re:and so meanwhile... by Maow · · Score: 1

      • * [herp]
      • * [derp]
      • * [ermahgerd]
      • * [whargarbl]
      • * [herpa derp derp]

      Translation: I've never read the Postgres docs and I see no reason to start now!

      PostgreSQL is a great database - why are there so many assholes like yourself responding to posts about it with bile?

      You'd have to be illiterate to read my post as a knock against PG - I said, in fact that "I'm itching for a good reason to switch."

      And, in case you're both illiterate and stupid, I also said, "I'm playing with it now, and growing more comfortable with psql", so no, I haven't read all the doc's, but had the schema page open in another tab at the time of posting.

      And unlike you, others have posted things like the \connect DB_NAME as a handy trick instead of use DB_NAME, so... thanks for nothing?

    135. Re:and so meanwhile... by Maow · · Score: 1

      The article didn't say that at all. It said they were moving away from MySQL ENTERPRISE licensing. MariaDB rebases off of current MySQL. They're still using MySQL - just not paying Oracle licenses. Maybe Oracle should re-think the pricing model if it wants to keep customers. Maybe they don't want to keep customers....

      Not so, from what El Reg says:

      Google swaps out MySQL, moves to MariaDB
      'They're moving it all,' says MariaDB Foundation headman

      ...

      Google's widespread MariaDB push may be an attempt by the Chocolate Factory to shift developer allegiance from MySQL to MariaDB, and in doing so dilute Oracle's influence over the open source database ecosystem.

      ...

        the Chocolate Factory now runs on a custom MySQL 5.1 build, Cole said in his talk at XLDB. But now Google is moving to MariaDB 10.0. This version of MariaDB is roughly equivalent to MySQL 5.6

    136. Re:and so meanwhile... by bad-badtz-maru · · Score: 1

      Yeah guy, you schooled me. You can't write a script to make those seemingly-minor tweaks to the mysqldump output? FWIW psql can barely import PG's own dumps. I think in the realm of rdmbs you'll find that product A's software for outputting to product B's import format is _always_ at least slightly broken.

    137. Re:and so meanwhile... by godefroi · · Score: 1

      Fair enough. Here's the argument, sans sarcasm:

      To assume that one or another tool is better for me without understanding my problem is foolish. In my particular case, I only HAVE transactional data, and this data is life-critical, as in, people may die if a transaction fails to be written to disk.

      "No-SQL" (in its common meaning, i.e. non-fully-ACID document stores) is not appropriate for my problem, and I would guess that you would agree.

      --
      Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
    138. Re:and so meanwhile... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      "Neither the name of the nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission."

      Pardon me. You are correct. I had mis-read it to say that it couldn't be distributed without permission. But it's only the use of names that is restricted.

    139. Re:and so meanwhile... by lgw · · Score: 1

      I work on cloud-scale transactional storage management these days, so you can guess my answer. I have no fear of my project disappearing because everyone moved to NoSQL.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    140. Re:and so meanwhile... by Maow · · Score: 1

      Yeah guy, you schooled me. You can't write a script to make those seemingly-minor tweaks to the mysqldump output?

      Of course I can. But would prefer not to have to, which speaks to the GP poster.

      FWIW psql can barely import PG's own dumps. I think in the realm of rdmbs you'll find that product A's software for outputting to product B's import format is _always_ at least slightly broken.

      This is, sadly, true - no argument from me.

      Well, I don't know about pg_dump & pg_restore yet but I think I need to check it out now that you mention it, so thanks for the heads-up.

    141. Re:and so meanwhile... by bad-badtz-maru · · Score: 1

      You may have better luck with a script designed specifically to convert mysql to pg. We use one as part of our ora to PG migration project (ora2pg). It's not perfect but it works pretty well. A quick search showed a couple of options for mysql, maybe something like http://sourceforge.net/projects/mysql2pg/ would give you better luck. pg_dump isn't much better at bringing in dumps than psql is. These dedicated conversion scripts usually take advantage of perl DBI connectivity to both DBs simultaneously, versus trying to export ddl and sql, and it seems to be a more successful approach.

  3. Don't give a shit. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who will pay for MySQL enterprise licenses into the future?"

    Left MySQL years ago and never looked back. I don't care if it lives or dies - not my problem - it's Oracle's.

    1. Re:Don't give a shit. by zwarte+piet · · Score: 1

      But you care enough to tell us about how little you care....

  4. "Will businesses needlessly give away money?" by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 0

    seriously, how is this even a question?

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:"Will businesses needlessly give away money?" by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      I'm more interested in if Facebook hasn't already gone off Mysql.

      and if they ever did pay for Oracle for support. I mean, why the fuck, if you can employ your own mysql experts. would oracles guys seriously be of much help? wasn't the reason they went with it originally that they didn't have to pay...

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    2. Re:"Will businesses needlessly give away money?" by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because the managers who select databases are buying ass-coverage. Performance and cost are secondary considerations.

    3. Re:"Will businesses needlessly give away money?" by asmkm22 · · Score: 1

      I've wondered this as well. Facebook is one of those companies that can pretty much attract whatever talent they want. Hell, they could probably just outright poach a MySQL engineer or 10 for cheaper than official support.

    4. Re:"Will businesses needlessly give away money?" by icebike · · Score: 1

      Maybe all the people versed in MySQL who have no scruples already work for Facebook?

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    5. Re:"Will businesses needlessly give away money?" by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      " Facebook is one of those companies that can pretty much attract whatever talent they want. "

      That is like saying that Phyllis Diller can have pretty much any man she wants.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    6. Re:"Will businesses needlessly give away money?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is like saying that Phyllis Diller can have pretty much any man she wants.

      Phyllis Diller is dead.

    7. Re: "Will businesses needlessly give away money?" by jbo5112 · · Score: 1

      Remember their motto of "move fast, break things." Go look at their data load some time. I doubt they're running a version close enough to stock that Oracle would be able to support it if they wanted to. Their backup/recovery system alone is insane, and they host 2 custom branches of MySQL on GitHub. When was the last time a software vendor supported a client's custom patches?

      Keep in mind that Facebook employs more than 10x as many people as MySQL, and has multiple MySQL teams. It wouldn't surprise me if Facebook has a bigger MySQL dev effort than the company. Either way, they handle all database support internally.

    8. Re: "Will businesses needlessly give away money?" by jbo5112 · · Score: 1

      Does Oracle even sell support for custom forks of MySQL for Facebook to buy?

    9. Re:"Will businesses needlessly give away money?" by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      How does that change anything?

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    10. Re:"Will businesses needlessly give away money?" by 3.5+stripes · · Score: 1

      Yoshinori Matsunobu.

      https://www.percona.com/live/mysql-conference-2013/users/yoshinori-matsunobu

      Among his Former jobs: "Yoshinori worked at MySQL/Sun/Oracle as a lead consultant in APAC for four years"

      --


      He tried to kill me with a forklift!
    11. Re:"Will businesses needlessly give away money?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmm... this particular story contradicts your assessment. They're moving from MySQL to MySQL under another name with lower costs licensing and performance enhancements. Seems performance and price are the motivating factors after all. Especially since the Maria version periodically rebases off of the one they are moving from.

  5. Government by armanox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Government for one. The US Department of Energy still uses MySQL, and I doubt they'll move off it anytime soon.

    --
    I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    1. Re:Government by confused+one · · Score: 2

      Are they paying Oracle for support? Or are they just using MySQL in their server farm, supporting it with internal resources?

    2. Re:Government by armanox · · Score: 1

      Knowing them, they're paying someone for support. Everything they use has a support contract in my experience (which has recently ended, I'm no a federal contractor).

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    3. Re:Government by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Likely paying. I know my [big company] was *looking* for another company to pay support for [open source software].

      Yes, there really are organizations like that... for example, ``oh, you want to use Perl,... lets see if we can get support for that... hmm... lets see... hmm... oh, HP is willing to support Perl on Solaris, but we'll also need to find Perl support for Linux too.'' (I wish I was making this up... and no, they wouldn't hire "you" or "me" for such support; it would need to be a [big company]).

  6. Enterprise? by RichM · · Score: 1

    Who will pay for MySQL enterprise licenses into the future?

    I've never come accross any company, or individual, who actually does this.

    1. Re:Enterprise? by Florian+Weimer · · Score: 5, Informative

      And the article confirms the large-scaler users aren't part of that elusive group, either:

      Many of the largest MySQL users — Twitter included — do not currently pay Oracle for an enterprise licence. Twitter, like Facebook, prefers to build their own extensions and customisations off the community version.

    2. Re:Enterprise? by aitikin · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Wait, you actually RTFA. You must be new here.

      --
      "Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
    3. Re:Enterprise? by Bigbutt · · Score: 2

      At the moment we do. We have a moderately sized Oracle environment but the company owners have been annoyed with the Oracle support costs and started moving to MySQL several years ago. Considering our environment, we paid for MySQL enterprise licenses. When Oracle bought MySQL, the company started moving to Postgres. Same when Oracle killed Sun (the Oracle DB license fees kept us from upgrading our older Sun equipment so we moved to Linux on Dell and then virtual machines). Now we're using Redhat and Postgres (it's all in the pipeline so there are still mySQL deployments).

      [John]

      --
      Shit better not happen!
  7. The Bold and the Beautiful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I love this new DB drama that's going on. Please keep us updated.

  8. How do you get cheaper than free? by msobkow · · Score: 2

    You don't have to pay for a commercial license of MySQL as far as I know, unless you want support for it.

    And even if there were a dollar difference, I doubt it would be enough to cover the cost of redeveloping everything to use NoSQL servers.

    Hell, it's not even cost effective to switch to another SQL database like PostgreSQL.

    Can you imagine the downtime required to export Facebook from MySQL and to re-import it to another database? The users would go ballistic!

    I don't expect any "earth shattering" movement by any of the big users in the near future.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    1. Re:How do you get cheaper than free? by sgbett · · Score: 3, Funny

      "One does not simply export Facebook!"

      --
      Invaders must die
    2. Re:How do you get cheaper than free? by rml1997 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hell, it's not even cost effective to switch to another SQL database like PostgreSQL.

      Can you imagine the downtime required to export Facebook from MySQL and to re-import it to another database? The users would go ballistic!

      I don't expect any "earth shattering" movement by any of the big users in the near future.

      I'm involved in a project that involves moving databases. We write each transaction to both the old and new structure using our data access layer, then export historic data and eventually, once we've verified the new system is working as expected, remove the old structure from the data access layer. This is the main reason data access layers are used.

    3. Re:How do you get cheaper than free? by msobkow · · Score: 1

      Great when you have one database instance and can afford to set up dual instances.

      How do you propose doing so for something like Facebook or Twitter that have thousands of nodes and servers?

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    4. Re:How do you get cheaper than free? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Great when you have one database instance and can afford to set up dual instances.

      How do you propose doing so for something like Facebook or Twitter that have thousands of nodes and servers?

      If you managed to set up thousands of instances of your old DBMS, what stops you from doing it again? You certainly have some sort of automated management framework with that many servers, so why can't you configure it to do whatever's needed for the migration?

    5. Re:How do you get cheaper than free? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      I don't know, but whatever system they come up with, I bet it will be fabulous!

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    6. Re:How do you get cheaper than free? by msobkow · · Score: 1

      I still think it would be easier for someone as large as Facebook to take a snapshot of MySQL and maintain/enhance it themselves than to switch databases.

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    7. Re:How do you get cheaper than free? by turbidostato · · Score: 1

      "How do you propose doing so for something like Facebook or Twitter that have thousands of nodes and servers?"

      Well, it's not a matter of proposal. Facebook have done it at least twice and it was done the way the grandparent sketched.

    8. Re:How do you get cheaper than free? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think it would be a more efficient use of money to pay developers and DBA to migrate that shit database, to something that properly supports referential integrity rather than forcing them to jump through hoops to work around that shit.

      And if the other developers whine: "I don't know postgres!" which is the typical justification I've seen: The response is: "Learn." Companies seem to be willing to do that with every other technology.

    9. Re:How do you get cheaper than free? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The obvious answer to this is one node at a time.

      You roll one node over to the new structure, verify that it's working. Then drop the old node. Move to the next node and repeat. You need a whole 1 extra node if you're being careful (maybe once you get a few dozen under your belt you can start doing 2 or 3 nodes at a time)

  9. 'looking at' NoSQL? by phantomfive · · Score: 2

    That's strange, for some reason I had the idea that Twitter and Facebook were already using NoSQL. If they aren't, then is any large company using NoSQL?

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    1. Re:'looking at' NoSQL? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Sure,the bulk of our healthcare data is stored in NoSQL databases, and has since the 70's.

    2. Re:'looking at' NoSQL? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google does - extensively

    3. Re: 'looking at' NoSQL? by jbo5112 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Facebook uses a NoSQL database (HBase) for their messaging system, and some related tech for data analysis (Hadoop). They also have custom photo serving software (haystack) for their photo storage. The main data (status updates, friends, likes, etc.) is in MySQL with memcache in front of it. There is also a cache layer (varnish) in front of the web servers. They said NoSQL isn't ready and point to the smaller messaging system needing more staff.

    4. Re:'looking at' NoSQL? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except NoSQL in the modern usage doesn't refer to VSAM, ISAM, IDMS, or IMS databases. And 90% of the NoSQL weenies have no idea what any of those databases are. They're all Hadoop! Hooah!,

    5. Re:'looking at' NoSQL? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      if I remember correctly twitter was using a NoSQL database (i can't remember which, it may have been mongodb) but it did not scale and would crash a lot so they rewrote it to use a database and no more fail whales.

    6. Re:'looking at' NoSQL? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Facebook's graph database (TAO - the associations and objects) is an incredibly distributed NoSQL database built on a MySQL persistence layer.

      Basically, they have two tables in mysql:
      Object:
      id -> type, data

      Association:
      id1, type, id2 -> time, data
      plus an additional index on id1, time, id2

      It uses multiple layers of write-through caches, is geographically distributed (via replication) and handles a billion reads per second. It has something like 4% cache miss and 0.2% write.

      So yes, facebook does not exactly exist in a typical relational database.

    7. Re:'looking at' NoSQL? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      That's actually fascinating. I'm not entirely sure how that works, I'll have to think about it. How would you do a query, for example, for a list of my friends?

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    8. Re:'looking at' NoSQL? by inglorion_on_the_net · · Score: 1

      Check out https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/tao-the-power-of-the-graph/10151525983993920

      To answer your question, you would basically ask TAO for all objects which are connected to the object that represents you by the "friend" association.

      TAO would then do whatever database queries are necessary to get what it doesn't already have in cache, cache the results, and return them to you.

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    9. Re:'looking at' NoSQL? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      thanks

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  10. Reverential integrity? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    One entire Billy Graham at a time?

  11. They pay enterprise? by gmuslera · · Score: 1

    Enterprise gives you basically better administration tools (monitoring, backup, HA, etc), and support. If you really need them, you will still need them if you switch to MariaDB, or will be a reason to not to swich (there are more players in the support area and extra tools, anyway). But most of hose players have good internal knowledge on MySQL, and have contributed code and patches to it, probably are not the target for the enterprise version.

    But if is enough for you the plain, non enterprise version of MySQL and existing available tools probably you will be better with MariaDB (or any of the other mysql compatible alternatives)

  12. what about slashdot? by larry+bagina · · Score: 3, Funny

    are you guys still using MySQL?

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    1. Re:what about slashdot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I see nothing here that could not be handled by a mysql version from 20 years ago.

    2. Re:what about slashdot? by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Or DBase 3+

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  13. "Web-scale"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Could someone please tell me what "web-scale" means?

    1. Re:"Web-scale"? by gl4ss · · Score: 2

      as far as I gather it's a joke.
      youtube for a video.

      it has to be a joke. just has to!

      (I guess it's supposed to mean that your site wont break even if you get slashdotted)

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  14. What the hell is "eyeing off"? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    but Facebook and Twitter are also eyeing off more open options

    Facepalm.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:What the hell is "eyeing off"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      So it's OK to just shit out random words as long as there's still enough semblance of sense for people to figure it out?

  15. "may have" by Truth_Quark · · Score: 1

    Google's switch [to MariaDB] may have been motivated by a lawsuit filed by Oracle over alleged use of Java patents in Google's Android operating system.

    You don't say.

  16. License by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    MySQL have an real open source license, the GPL.

    Postgres does not have any real open source license. Their license is not OSI-approved nor FSF-approved.

    They have some custom vanity license of their own.

    1. Re:License by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      MySQL have an real open source license, the GPL.

      Postgres does not have any real open source license. Their license is not OSI-approved nor FSF-approved.

      They have some custom vanity license of their own.

      It is OSI-approved: http://opensource.org/licenses/PostgreSQL

    2. Re:License by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Bullshit.

      It's a variation of the BSD/MIT license, which has fewer restrictions than the viral GPL. It's functionally equivalent to the most permissive Creative Commons license, only requiring attribution. It's explicitly listed on the OSI website as an approved license.

      "Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose, without fee, and without a written agreement is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph and the following two paragraphs appear in all copies."

      The only people who object to this type of license are GPL bigots who want to impose their version of "freedom" on everyone else.

    3. Re:License by MikeBabcock · · Score: 1

      ... fewer restrictions on usage which many see as more restrictions long-term.

      That argument's old and you probably know it well, but claiming either GPL or BSD is more free than the other is a matter of perspective, not one of facts.

      --
      - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
  17. Aquire and Obscure by Joebert · · Score: 2

    I don't think Oracle really ever planned on doing much more with MySQL than keeping control of it until it dies.

    --
    Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
  18. We did have MiniSQL and PostGres by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    in the mid-90s though.

  19. They should switch to Mongo DB by citizenr · · Score: 3, Funny

    Its web scale!

    --
    Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
  20. Simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    MySQL can't defer referential integrity checks until transaction commit. That should be a deal breaker from day one.

  21. Forked It by neonmonk · · Score: 1

    I'd be really surprised if these companies haven't actually forked MySQL and are maintaining their own internal version.

  22. I switched to MariaDB by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 3, Funny

    I switched to MariaDB but my database is the size of a microbe so the few quirks were of no difficulty; but there were quirks. MariaDB was not a plug in replacement. I love it and wouldn't go back but it did take a tiny bit of work. So if I had one zillion servers with crazy databases I would be taking my time on that one. I suspect that what you will see is new development experiments depending on MariaDB and slowly increasing the pressure until they just make the switch.

    The other question is how many obscure features of MySQL features are they using? (Including custom code)

  23. Re:No Cross Database Joins by theskipper · · Score: 1

    contrib/dblink works fine for its intended purpose and preserves security if you know what you're doing.

    Btw, what exactly does "sequences out of sync with data" mean?

  24. Re:No Cross Database Joins by hey! · · Score: 1

    What do you mean "out of sync"? You mean it generates the same number twice? Or do you mean it can generate a number that has been assigned by some other mechanism to a primary key field?

    If the latter, that's true of database sequences in general, including Oracle RDBMS. Some platforms, such as SQL Server, give you both sequences and autoincrement fields. The reason to have both is that while autoincrement is simpler to use, sequences are more flexible (e.g. you can obtain the key value for a row before the transaction is committed).

    In any case, it is bad practice to rely on an auto increment or identity field's magnitude for anything other than identifying a record. For example, developers sometimes use such numbers to order records by when they were created, but auto increment numbers aren't reliable for that purpose. Sequences work just fine for generating numeric primary keys, even though they can pretty much intrinsically get "out of sync" with the keys in a table. "Syncing" is not a feature offered by sequences, period.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  25. ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE by DavidSWiener · · Score: 1

    If Postgress had that statement, I'd switch right now

    1. Re:ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People are working on it, so with a bit of luck it'll be in in a release or two. Hopefully it'll be less broken than MySQL's version though: in if the new row collides with more than one existing row (possible if the table has more than one unique index), what happens? MySQL's answer: it arbitrarily picks one to update, and if that's not the one you wanted, then :'-(. And if it only matches one existing row, but on a secondary unique index rather than the primary key, a lot of the time you'd want an error in that case rather than doing the update, but there's no way to specify that in MySQL.

    2. Re:ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE by adnonsense · · Score: 1

      It's in the works, hopefully for version 9.4.

  26. Performance defaults? by mveloso · · Score: 1

    I don't really remember that well anymore, but Linux and MySQL have always been tied together...probably because mysql was relatively fast out of the box. Even today Postgres' default's suck, and the wiki says so:

    http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Tuning_Your_PostgreSQL_Server

    "One reason the defaults are low is because on some platforms (like older Solaris versions and SGI), having large values requires invasive action like recompiling the kernel"

    I mean, who remembers when there was a Solaris kernel that you could recompile (sunos4). Who gives a shit about IRIX? I mean, do you still have to specify cylinder and sector counts? WTF? It's 2013. Update your config for a Xeon 2ghz box with 8gb of ram already. If you want to be conservative, use a core 2 duo.

    I kept expecting something in the doc to say "due to the lack of floating point coprocessors on some 386 systems so that's not assumed" or "CP/M wasn't designed for multi-user time sharing, so we implement manual time slicing."

    Maybe they don't update the config because they want to get paid the consulting $$ to tune it?

    1. Re:Performance defaults? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Everything you said is spot on.

      Then we move on to the issues one finds when they try and run PostgreSQL in a FreeBSD jail.

      Fucking ridiculous.

  27. Postgresql real problem by petermp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I personally think that the real problem with Postgresql happened 10 years ago. At that time it was not possible to run Postgresql on Windows(it was only possible via cygwin). That helped mysql get critical mass and Postgresql stayed behind. Then the snowball effect came into play and mysql was getting much more users compared to Postgresql.

  28. Re:No Cross Database Joins by Pathwalker · · Score: 1

    My guess is that he doesn't understand how sequences work, and expects more than just a monotonic counter.

    Specifically, I think he missed this line in the documentation:

    To avoid blocking concurrent transactions that obtain numbers from the same sequence, a nextval operation is never rolled back; that is, once a value has been fetched it is considered used, even if the transaction that did the nextval later aborts. This means that aborted transactions might leave unused "holes" in the sequence of assigned values.

  29. Re:No Cross Database Joins by bad-badtz-maru · · Score: 1

    Do you realize how difficult and time consuming it is to switch a large codebase from one RDMBS to another?

  30. Re:No Cross Database Joins by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    It's not that bad if you started with an ANSI SQL compliant DB, didn't write unnecessary DB specific code and commented those places you did.

    But once you've built significant code around something like mySQL you are permafucked.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  31. Re:No Cross Database Joins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Summary: I don't understand how sequences work (that they are not *supposed* to stay in sync and this should never be assumed), so like the typical bad workman I blame the tool and dismiss it as 'a toy'.

    The tool you should be blaming is yourself.

  32. Postgresql by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I am a fan of Postgresql. I prefer it whenever using it is supported.

    However, I often find that most LAMP stack apps were written only for mysql. For example, Wordpress was originally written for MySQL only, but now it supports Postgresql but few hosting companies set it up using Postgresql.

    If I were to write a new LAMP app or any database driven app, I would probably develop with Postgresql as the primary DB. Why? Because then my installer could install the database too with no problems with licensing or distribution rights.

  33. Re: No Cross Database Joins by Simon+Brooke · · Score: 1

    If you're working with an application which hasn't been engineered for database portability, yes, it can be a complete pain. Which is why a good software engineer, embarking on what may be a long-lived application, designs for database portability. You know those 'special features' your favourite RDBMS offers? They're called 'vendor lock-in', and you should avoid them.

    --
    I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
  34. Re: No Cross Database Joins by bad-badtz-maru · · Score: 1

    The problem is that database abstraction (at the level sufficient to throw a switch to change DB platforms) carries a performance price. If you've scaled your business to the point that you "need" SQL Server (as if it outperforms mysql), as the OP was suggesting, you have probably de-abstracted yourself to the point that swapping DBs will be a serious pain.

  35. Testing Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Testing pOST

  36. They probably will (till 2038) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The problem? Same as 32-bit "classic UNIX" has with UTC timeclock, albeit in MySQL (unless they fix it, & it's even present in the 64-bit offering as well iirc) -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

    ---

    PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:

    "MySQL database's inbuilt functions like UNIX_TIMESTAMP() will return 0 after 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038"

    ---

    * &, "there ya go"...

    APK

    P.S.=> THIS, needs a "fix", bad... apk

  37. apples and oranges by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    MySQL is used predominately because it's very simple. It's good for simple minds, and there are a lot of simple minds. People with bigger brains usually gravitate toward more advanced tools. They use PostgreSQL. Comparing MySQL and PostgreSQL is just dumb. They are both databases that use the SQL syntax for queries. After that the similarities end.