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Why To Choose PostgreSQL Over MySQL, MariaDB (dice.com)

Posted by timothy on from the your-momma dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes: PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB are the three "main" open-source relational databases available today (there are four if you count FireBird, but for brevity we're excluding it). For years, MySQL had a reputation of being faster than PostgreSQL, but much of that was due to the MyISAM database engine, which didn't support transactions. On the flip side of things, PostgreSQL had a reputation for being slower but more reliable. But with the recent versions of both platforms, things have started to change; for example, speed has been less of a problem for PostgreSQL, while MySQL now defaults to the InnoDB engine, which does handle transactions. According to developer David Bolton, here's why PostgreSQL is worth a second look for your database-management needs (Dice link).

4 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. PL/pgSQL by nerdyalien · · Score: 5, Informative

    At least for me, the killer feature of PostgreSQL is its procedure language PL/pgSQL. By a fortunate accident, I had the opportunity to write some complicated features (read "calculation heavy") for a web app using PL/pgSQL. Once coupled with triggers, you can just leave everything to the DB to the point, controller has to do nothing except query and return JSON objects to the front. It is so expressive, powerful, efficient and reliable.

    I have worked with MySQL, Oracle, MSSQL and as of late MongoDB.
    Given a choice, I will always settle for PostgreSQL... it is just so natural to work with.

  2. Re:I won't use a DBMS I cannot pronounce. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Everyone I know just calls it "Postgres".

    This was its original name. It was the successor (Get it? "Post"?) to the RDBMS known as Ingres. There was some IP issue associated with the Postgres name when they went to open source it, so they gave it a new name: PostgreSQL. Yes, I agree it was a very poor choice, something only a true nerd would come up with.

  3. Re:Why choose mysql? JetProfiler by mveloso · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not the same. JetProfiler shows you, in realtime and with pretty pictures, what fucked up stuff you're doing to your database. pgFouine is:

    "pgFouine is a PostgreSQL log analyzer written in PHP. It is based on PQA, the Practical Query Analyzer written in Ruby. pgFouine aims to be able to parse huge logs and to have a nice and useful HTML output."

    Yeah, welcome to 1995.

  4. Exactly which replication? by coder111 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Depends on what kind of replication you need.

    It does pretty decent asynchronous master->slave replication.

    You can also have a mirror with synchronous writes.

    Multi-master replication- there are some 3rd party tools to do that, still pretty young and immature AFAIK.

    Clustering- there are some 3rd party projects to do that, some commercial.

    More info here: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wi...

    --Coder