Re: New to PostgreSQL - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

Steve,

Welcome to the community.

>  So I'll summarize my perceptions based in the research I've
> done, and would greatly appreciate any commentary.  Please don't be
> afraid to tell me I'm naive, misguided, short sighted or nuts. ;-)

Thank you for posting this.  It is always useful for us to have a clear idea
of what the "informed" OSS community thinks of PostgreSQL; it tells us what
work we still need to do.

> 4. A true object relational database, which should mesh well with PHP5's
> new beefed up object model.

Yeah, execept that PHP really needs some of the OO-to-Relational mapping tools
which Perl and Java have.

> 5. Avoids the complexities and ambiguities in licensing from which
> MySQL seems to suffer.

That's an understatement ;-)

> 1. My impression based on what I've seen written is that PHP/MySQL
> integration is better.  After all, while people talk of LAMP, one does
> not ever hear of LAPP.  However, looking over the functions available
> for each in PHP5, I don't see obvious evidence of this.

Well, when people say this, "integration" means two things:
1) thanks to O'Reilly, documentation and books on PHP+MySQL are much more
available than PHP+PostgreSQL
2) Thanks to both history and the distinct lack of robust database-abstraction
tools in PHP to date, "hard-wiring" of MySQL syntax is very common in OSS PHP
apps.   Thus, frequently, if you want to use a common PHP app off sourceforge
you need to either use MySQL or port it yourself.

> 2. Administration is more difficult.  I read this in the "PHP5 MySQL
> Bible" but from what little I've seen for myself, I don't really see the
> difference.  I did note a couple of things in the recent LWN article on
> PostgreSQL.  7.5 will introduce direct import of CSV files, and the
> direct renaming of columns, which I believe are things that have been
> long supported in MySQL.  Not show stoppers, of course, but they do hint
> at PostgreSQL perhaps not being as convenient to use as MySQL.  Then
> again, I recognize that this is a perception based on little evidence.

Some things are "more difficult"; this is frequently a tradeoff between
flexibility and ease-of-use.   Since we support more platforms than MySQL
(see below), our setup can be more complex.  Since we give the DBA more
control over database performance, tuning is more complex.  Since we have a
high regard for the SQL Standards, we don't provide as many non-standard
options on the command line.

That's a way in which we are likely to always be different from MySQL; we
would rather have the flexibility than the simplicity when we have to make a
choice.

> 3. I prefer MySQL's phpmyadmin to the command line for working with the
> database.  I have heard that phppgadmin is not as feature complete.
> However, looking over my recent installation, I don't see glaring
> differences.

Yes, I think the phpPgAdmin team would be surprised to hear this.  Also please
note that there are *many* options for PG Admin tools; pgAdminIII, pgAccess,
XPG, Mammoth Administrator, etc.

> 4. MySQL is more multiplatform.  While this does not bother me, I do
> have coworkers that use Windows that will be affected by my choice of
> database.  Fortunately, I believe 7.5 is to have true (i.e. non-cygwin
> win32 support).

Amusing how "more multiplatform" == Windows.   We have supported many more
unix-like platforms for a much longer time than MySQL -- pretty much if it
has a unix shell, we're ported to it, 27 different OSes at last count.

Agreed, though, that Windows is a necessity for some people which is why we're
doing the port in the first place.

>  This is based on hear-say and I get the
> distinct impression that no one really knows, or at least no one ever
> seems to present numbers to back them up.  I also understand that it can
> be difficult to make an apples to apples comparison due to the feature
> disparity between the two, which was quite vast until recent times
> (MySQL's 4.x series).

Yeah.  Try Jan's TPC-W test.   Also, MySQL has been talking about improving
CrashMe recently.

> I am currently working on a project, which started out MySQL, but which
> I am porting to PostGreSQL and will finish development of the two
> branches in tandem.  This seems like a good way to get a feel for
> similarities and differences.

That is an *excellent* way to test.

--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco