Bo Lorentsen <bl@netgroup.dk> writes:
> On Tue, 2003-08-19 at 14:37, Roderick A. Anderson wrote:
>> My take on others research was that MySQL transaction
>> model is a bubble gum and bailing wire add on not an integral part of
>> MySQL. It _was_ tacked onto the top of the database so if either it or
>> MySQL failed you were likely to loose data.
> But this goes for 3.x have you tried 4.x and there InnoDB tables ?
It's still bolted on. The entire concept that "transactional integrity
is optional" is ludicrous, IMHO. "Integrity" and "optional" are
contradictory.
One thing you should ask about MySQL is where they keep the system's
metadata (catalog data). In Postgres it's under transactional control
just like everything else, which means it's (a) crash-safe and (b)
rollback-able. This is why all DDL changes are rollback-able in PG.
I honestly don't know what the corresponding arrangements are in MySQL
... but I suspect that even in an all-InnoDB database, there is critical
system data that is outside the InnoDB table handler and thus not
transaction-safe.
regards, tom lane
