Why I Choose PostgreSQL Over MySQL/MariaDB

Nerval's Lobster writes For the past ten years, developers and tech pros have made a game of comparing MySQL and PostgreSQL, with the latter seen by many as technically superior. Those who support PostgreSQL argue that its standards support and ACID compliance outweighs MySQL's speed. But MySQL remains popular thanks to its inclusion in every Linux Web hosting package, meaning that a mind-boggling number of Web developers have used it. In a new article, developer David Bolton compares MySQL/MariaDB 5.7.6 (released March 9, 2015) with PostgreSQL 9.4.1 and thinks the latter remains superior on several fronts, including subqueries, JSON support, and better licensing and data integrity: "I think MySQL has done a great job of improving itself to keep relevant, but I have to confess to favoring PostgreSQL."

Comments

Re:I choose MS SQL Server

[Anonymous Coward]

In terms of licensing, I think the MS sales force is learning too much from Oracle. We are backing out from supporting MS-SQL due to the insanely expensive licensing terms for deployments that MS sales is starting to apply to it.

Re:Postgres has referential integrity

[rycamor]

That's not even close to what "referential integrity" means. In fact, it could be used to accomplish quite the opposite.

OIDs are one feature of PostgreSQL that should be buried inside the implementation and not allowed to be accessed from the developer side. Otherwise you are pretty much completely going around the whole point of the Relational Model. If you are developing an application in such a way that it needs pointers to rows, you might as well just store data on the filesystem and be done with it. Or use one of those fancy NoSQL thingies and enjoy your data corruption.

Re:I choose MS SQL Server

[phantomfive]

No, you misunderstood what I wrote. I was referring to the fact that MySQL DDL is not transactional. So if you run an 'alter table' command, don't expect to be able to roll it back. Seriously though, even SQLite offers this feature, so MySQL is just a dunce.

The main difference that I see is that Postgres fans generally have the same zeal and lack of experience that Rails fanboys exhibit. I am not sure where you fall but you are doing a disservice to our community by spouting false claims when you do not understand what you are talking about. (That sounds like a rails fanboy to me.)

I'm pretty sure it means you're a moron. Or rather, you should have thought a little before spouting insults.