I agree... as a newcomer to PG from MySQL and a web hosting provider, PG is no more difficult to admin than MySQL IMHO. Just requires a little understanding. But with tools like PGAdmin, even the understanding required is reduced.
I beleive that MySQL just achieved a snowball effect, and that's just the way it happened. PG is easy to install. Although one hold-up has to be the fact that I for instance can't run PG on my works laptop that runs XP (without significant hassle). My laptop is where I prototype all of my applications (if I am able) and my life would be sooo much easier if I could run a PG server alongside my various other bits of IDE. I tend to be a little more tenacious than most, I'm sure if I find it hassle, then others do too. Many developers that I know of, use a windows machine and dev tools, to develop what will eventually be a Unix app. Just easier that way sometimes.
Credit cards are easy to use, in fact their darn difficult not to use. MySQL is similar to this, when they announce a new release, the release is available not only as source, but .exe and a dozen other platforms all waiting to be used. So it's a really easy decsion to make if you know that you can run your DB anywhere. Install it from RPM, or .exe.
Just my 2 cents again.
T.
Tom Lane wrote:
"Rod K" <rod@23net.net> writes:
Paul Thomas wrote:
Much of the populatity of MySQL seems to stem from PHPs out-of-the-box
support for it.
This is incorrect. The embedded mysql client library was not added until
PHP4.0 RC1. PHP's popularity existed long before this. The real culprit
causing the popularity of MySQL was it's ubiquity among hosting providers
and the virtual non-existence of PG in that arena. If PG had been more
friendly to shared hosting environments, perhaps this situation wouldn't
have arisen.
You are both engaging in the most blatant form of historical
revisionism. Of course PHP's support for MySQL didn't drive MySQL
adoption --- it was the other way around, PHP adapted to MySQL because
that was what was out there. I think "friendly to shared hosting
environments" is a made-up reason as well. The real reason PG lost
mindshare to MySQL in the early web days is that at the time, PG was
hard to install, somewhat buggy, and poorly documented. (Which was not
surprising considering that none of these mattered much in its original
academic environment.) MySQL didn't do much, maybe, but what it could
do it did pretty well and without install/learning curve hassles. We
had mostly caught up on those criteria by perhaps 7.1 or 7.2, but the
mindshare gap remains.
regards, tom lane
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