postgres vs Mysql

[OneSolution]

I need to decide on which database system to use for our company. What is
the popular opinion on PostGres vs. MySql?

Thanks,
Santosh

[Eric Kincl]

OneSolution wrote:

I need to decide on which database system to use for our company. What is
the popular opinion on PostGres vs. MySql?

Thanks,
Santosh

Hey,
From what I gather, MySQL is designed to handle lighter-weight applications,
such as BBs sytems, CMS systems, etc... Postgres SQL is more heavy-weight,
able to handle higher server loads and more data.

Of course I'm not sure if this is true, this is just what I have gathered
from the little I heard and seen about them. If it is true, then as a
company you would probably want to go with Postgres. Once again, I'm not
completely sure if this is the main difference or not.
-Eric Kincl

[Alexander M. Turek]

Am Thu, 20 Nov 2003 08:04:30 +0000 hat Eric Kincl
<Er**@Kincl.net_NO_SPAM_> geschrieben:

From what I gather, MySQL is designed to handle lighter-weight
applications, such as BBs sytems, CMS systems, etc...

Where did you get this from?
Have a look at this and speak again. :-)

http://www.eweek.com/slideshow/0,301...o=2&i=1,00.asp
http://www.eweek.com/slideshow/0,301...o=1&i=1,00.asp

Regards,

--

Alexander M. Turek
<ra***@users.sourceforge.net>

The phpMyAdmin Project
<http://www.phpmyadmin.net>

[Kevin Thorpe]

>>I need to decide on which database system to use for our company. What is

the popular opinion on PostGres vs. MySql?

MySQL is fine even for very large applications. Its shortcomings are:

1). Database updates are relatively slow. This is because MySQL locks
the whole table to do a write. Not a problem for largely query
applications. This should be better with INNODB support but I haven't
tried it.

2). There is no support for stored procedures or views. This is probably
why some people say it isn't scalable. If you have requirements for
distributed development with access restrictions for each team then
MySQL will not work. You can get round this somewhat by writing an
application class library (good practice in larger php apps anyway).

I don't feel qualified to talk about PostGres

[R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah]

"OneSolution" <on*********@jatakainc.com> wrote in message news:<bH****************@newssvr23.news.prodigy.co m>...

I need to decide on which database system to use for our company. What is
the popular opinion on PostGres vs. MySql?

It depends. Once I worked on a PPC site that receives over
20,000 hits. The initial version that I worked was with MySQL (MyISAM
type), but it started bugging with "Too many connections" error. Later
other fellow guys have upgraded with InnoDB table type. But, even then
they upgraded to PostGre and it seems to be fine.

Also seems there is a good future for SQLite.

---
"One who mix sports and patriotism is a barbarian"
Email: rrjanbiah-at-Y!com

[Pham Nuwen]

OneSolution wrote:

I need to decide on which database system to use for our company. What is
the popular opinion on PostGres vs. MySql?

Depends on what you are doing. MySQL isn't bad for small, and simple
databases that don't have to be transactional. PostgreSQL is a full
blown RDBMS, and as such is much more robust, and powerful.

Personally I use MySQL on my Website because that is easiest to find
hosting for, and everything I do at work is on PostgreSQL. Overall I
prefer PostgreSQL, and find it is much easier to deal with.

Because this is for your company, I'd highly recommend PostgreSQL mostly
because it is fully transactional, and can do a lot of things that MySQL
just isn't able to do.

As for accessing it with PHP both MySQL and PostgreSQL are pretty much
the same.

--
/---+----+----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----+----+---\
I ph***********@libertydice.org II No nation was ever ruined by I
I http://www.libertydice.org II trade, even seemingly the most I
I remove "3d6" to e-mail II disadvantageous. - Ben Franklin I
\---+----+----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----+----+---/

[OneSolution]

Thanks guys. I've used Postgres a loooong time ago and so I lean towards
that. However, MySql seems to be popular. Based on what I have gathered,
it would seem that Postgres would work better for heavy updates and other
non-query related transactions.

So now the question - recommended links for me to get up to speed quick on
Postgres? I'm going to go to obvious sites like sunsite etc. So if you
have good stuff, please do let me know.

Cheers,
Santosh

P.S.: I installed Redhat 9. Does the installation come out of the box with
PostGres ready to go? Is there anything special that I'd have to do to make
it work? Thanks ...
"OneSolution" <on*********@jatakainc.com> wrote in message
news:bH****************@newssvr23.news.prodigy.com ...

I need to decide on which database system to use for our company. What is
the popular opinion on PostGres vs. MySql?

Thanks,
Santosh

[Michael Fuhr]

"OneSolution" <on*********@jatakainc.com> writes:

Thanks guys. I've used Postgres a loooong time ago and so I lean towards
that. However, MySql seems to be popular. Based on what I have gathered,
it would seem that Postgres would work better for heavy updates and other
non-query related transactions.

If you used PostgreSQL (or whatever it was called then) a long time
ago, then I'm surprised that you're inclined to use it based on
that experience. My experience with PostgreSQL about five years
ago was dismal: it was slow and I couldn't populate a several-million
record database without getting data corruption; I ended up abandoning
PostgreSQL altogether on that project.

I've heard that PostgreSQL is much better now. Did anybody else
have bad experiences with it several years ago? If so, have you
used it recently and are you satisfied that problems of the past
have been fixed?

--
Michael Fuhr
http://www.fuhr.org/~mfuhr/

[Pham Nuwen]

OneSolution wrote:

So now the question - recommended links for me to get up to speed quick on
Postgres? I'm going to go to obvious sites like sunsite etc. So if you
have good stuff, please do let me know.
Well the obvious one is

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/

Also check out

http://archives.postgresql.org/
and
comp.databases.postgresql.general
P.S.: I installed Redhat 9. Does the installation come out of the box with
PostGres ready to go? Is there anything special that I'd have to do to make
it work? Thanks ...

Pretty much. Do this:

[cst@asp-peoria cst]$ cat /var/log/rpmpkgs | grep post
postgresql-7.2.1-2PGDG.i386.rpm
postgresql-libs-7.2.1-2PGDG.i386.rpm
postgresql-server-7.2.1-2PGDG.i386.rpm

This tells you which packages you have installed, and their version(yes
I know I'm running a very old version on that server). The three listed
above are all you need for postgresql. now make sure it is running. do a
'chkconfig --list' and see if it is on, if not do a 'chkconfig
postgresql on' then '/etc/init.d/postgresql start'. then you can 'su -
postgres' and create users and databases.

GoogleMike posted a small tutorial on this yesterday, that should get
you going.

for PHP you'll need these two packages (or newer versions of them):

[cst@asp-peoria cst]$ cat /var/log/rpmpkgs | grep php
php-4.1.2-7.2.6.i386.rpm
php-pgsql-4.1.2-7.2.6.i386.rpm

--
/---+----+----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----+----+---\
I ph***********@libertydice.org II No nation was ever ruined by I
I http://www.libertydice.org II trade, even seemingly the most I
I remove "3d6" to e-mail II disadvantageous. - Ben Franklin I
\---+----+----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----+----+---/

[Pham Nuwen]

Michael Fuhr wrote:

I've heard that PostgreSQL is much better now. Did anybody else
have bad experiences with it several years ago? If so, have you
used it recently and are you satisfied that problems of the past
have been fixed?

I've used PostgreSQL extensively for the past two years, and the only
data corruption I've seen comes from dumb ass perl programmers.

peoria=# select count(pcr_num) from pcr_logdata;
count
---------
2150551
(1 row)

No major problems with it so far, other than it is starting to be awful
slow (about 3 seconds) to query against due to the hardware it is
running on (P90/512MB) and the fact it is running on Postgres 7.2.1

--
/---+----+----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----+----+---\
I ph***********@libertydice.org II No nation was ever ruined by I
I http://www.libertydice.org II trade, even seemingly the most I
I remove "3d6" to e-mail II disadvantageous. - Ben Franklin I
\---+----+----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----+----+---/

[OneSolution]

Well, several years ago, I used it in an academic environment with no
pressure from any group to make it work better ... so I never really got hit
with any unreliability issue. I remember that it worked ... and worked
well for the choices that we had in 1997 or 1998, for the tasks that we had
in mind.
"Michael Fuhr" <mf***@fuhr.org> wrote in message
news:3f**********@omega.dimensional.com...

"OneSolution" <on*********@jatakainc.com> writes:

Thanks guys. I've used Postgres a loooong time ago and so I lean towards that. However, MySql seems to be popular. Based on what I have gathered, it would seem that Postgres would work better for heavy updates and other non-query related transactions.

If you used PostgreSQL (or whatever it was called then) a long time
ago, then I'm surprised that you're inclined to use it based on
that experience. My experience with PostgreSQL about five years
ago was dismal: it was slow and I couldn't populate a several-million
record database without getting data corruption; I ended up abandoning
PostgreSQL altogether on that project.

I've heard that PostgreSQL is much better now. Did anybody else
have bad experiences with it several years ago? If so, have you
used it recently and are you satisfied that problems of the past
have been fixed?

--
Michael Fuhr
http://www.fuhr.org/~mfuhr/

[Michael Fuhr]

Pham Nuwen <ph***********@libertydice.org> writes:

Michael Fuhr wrote:

I've heard that PostgreSQL is much better now. Did anybody else
have bad experiences with it several years ago? If so, have you
used it recently and are you satisfied that problems of the past
have been fixed?

I've used PostgreSQL extensively for the past two years, and the only
data corruption I've seen comes from dumb ass perl programmers.

Could you elaborate on what "dumb ass perl programmers" are doing
that results in data corruption? What, if anything, are they doing
that "dumb ass [pick any language] programmers" couldn't do? In
other words, is the language they're using really relevant?

--
Michael Fuhr
http://www.fuhr.org/~mfuhr/

[Pham Nuwen]

Michael Fuhr wrote:

Could you elaborate on what "dumb ass perl programmers" are doing
that results in data corruption?
In our db the original contractor who programed this monstrousity
managed to build a table that takes logdata from one set of (DBF) files
and imports it into a table. Instead of doing this the intelligent way
with a proper table, he instead built a vertical monster that looks like
this (greatly simplified):

recordsetnumber | field | value | timestamp
========================================
1 aa 1 12:01
1 ab 3 12:01
1 aa 2 12:02
1 ab 5 12:02
2 aa 3 12:01
etc....

All in all not a mortal sin (ugly and stupid but not a sin), except that
the timestamp that obviously has to be the unique key, was not produced
on the backend but taken from the client end in a user edititable field.
Thus the data now has no integrity. No actual data loss, just a UGLY
mess, that I'm having to support and clean up.
What, if anything, are they doing that "dumb ass [pick any language]
programmers" couldn't do?
Nothing it just happened to be perl in this case. However it did does
stem from a particular attitude I personally have found to be fairly
unique to the perl programmers I've meet. I don't mean to dispariage all
perl programmers, nor do I think any one language is better or worse
than another, but in my own experience I have found that many perl
programmers are far too lax about data integrity, and security. They
tend to spend more time making an unreadable mess, and vastly more
complicated program, than the task requires. I think it comes from the
web-programming attitude, of "well if that doesn't look right, we can
change it, and we don't have to worry about what it used to look like".
In my case however what it did look like is all too critical.
In other words, is the language they're using really relevant?

Nope.

--
/---+----+----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----+----+---\
I ph***********@libertydice.org II No nation was ever ruined by I
I http://www.libertydice.org II trade, even seemingly the most I
I remove "3d6" to e-mail II disadvantageous. - Ben Franklin I
\---+----+----+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+----+----+---/