On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 09:54:49AM -0500, Chad Perrin wrote:
> Eric Jahn wrote:
> >On Saturday 04 December 2004 03:27 pm, Paul M Foster wrote:
> >
> >>On Sat, Dec 04, 2004 at 07:14:50AM -0500, Chad Perrin wrote:
> >>
> >>>2. Why is MySQL so much more popular than PostreSQL?
> >
> >
> >>Because it has a company and marketing behind it. Really.
> >
> >
> >...and support, and now clustering. Clustering is now our Pee Wee
> Herman word
> >of the day. Anyway, I was reading about Clusgres online, but it looks
> to be
> >proprietary closed.
> >
>
> Wow. So, contrasted with the assertions to the contrary made by
> PostreSQL devotees, each is much better than the other for certain
> tasks. Thanks for the information.
Hmm. I'm not sure "much better" is appropriate. If Bryan's right, MySQL
is easier on resources, making it marginally more suited to web work.
Though MySQL used to be the speed demon years ago, PostgreSQL has
recently matched it in general. And until recently, MySQL did not have
transaction support and a few other critical SQL features which
PostgreSQL did.
There are also licensing issues with MySQL. I believe the gist of it is
that if you're running closed source software against MySQL, you have to
have a commercial license to use the product. Actually, it's probably
more like if you're _selling_ closed source software against MySQL....
MySQL got a head start in popularity because of its speed, and probably
its lesser resource drain. The company that builds and sells it took
advantage of this to market to a lot of people who didn't care much
about SQL standards, transactions and such. They apparently were also
diligent in marketing to potential partners, who endorsed MySQL or
included MySQL with their products.
PostgreSQL is completely Open Source, with no company backing. It has
striven to be standards based, and given MySQL as its nearest
competition, has closed the speed gap while continuing to add features.
In the end, I'm not sure it much matters which you use. I don't like the
licensing issues, and I prefer the more complete SQL feature set, so I
go for PostgreSQL. But I don't know that it matters much.
Paul
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