Thread: Re: Why PostgreSQL is not that popular as MySQL?

Re: Why PostgreSQL is not that popular as MySQL?

From
Ronald Cole
Date:
Raymond Chui <raymond.chui@noaa.gov> writes:
> I am just start look at PostgreSQL for our Redhat Linux.
> I am wonder why most of people choose MySQL in Linux
> world rather than PostgreSQL? PostgreSQL has 15 years
> history (I never know that before) which is much longer
> than MySQL. Also PostgreSQL supports a lot of things
> which MySQL has not support yet.

Postgres, yes.  PostgreSQL, no.  PostgreSQL was a new project with
Postgres95 as a starting point.  Postgres95 was an attempt to put an
SQL front-end on Postgres.  AFAIK, most all of the Postgres code was
jettisoned early on for performance reasons.  That makes PostgreSQL
roughly five years old, code-wise.

I still have a Postgres95 tree in CVS before the PostgreSQL fork to
prove it, too!  ;)

--
Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA  93556-1412
Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com>      Phone: (760) 499-9142
President, CEO                             Fax: (760) 499-9152
My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084  4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B

Re: Re: Why PostgreSQL is not that popular as MySQL?

From
The Hermit Hacker
Date:
On 29 Nov 2000, Ronald Cole wrote:

> Raymond Chui <raymond.chui@noaa.gov> writes:
> > I am just start look at PostgreSQL for our Redhat Linux.
> > I am wonder why most of people choose MySQL in Linux
> > world rather than PostgreSQL? PostgreSQL has 15 years
> > history (I never know that before) which is much longer
> > than MySQL. Also PostgreSQL supports a lot of things
> > which MySQL has not support yet.
>
> Postgres, yes.  PostgreSQL, no.  PostgreSQL was a new project with
> Postgres95 as a starting point.  Postgres95 was an attempt to put an
> SQL front-end on Postgres.  AFAIK, most all of the Postgres code was
> jettisoned early on for performance reasons.  That makes PostgreSQL
> roughly five years old, code-wise.
>
> I still have a Postgres95 tree in CVS before the PostgreSQL fork to
> prove it, too!  ;)

so do we :)  way way back when:

RCS file: /home/projects/pgsql/cvsroot/pgsql/HISTORY,v
Working file: HISTORY
head: 1.79
branch:
locks: strict
access list:
symbolic names:
        REL7_0_PATCHES: 1.70.0.2
        REL7_0: 1.70
        REL6_5_PATCHES: 1.52.0.2
        REL6_5: 1.52
        REL6_4: 1.44.0.2
        release-6-3: 1.33
        SUPPORT: 1.1.1.1
        PG95-DIST: 1.1.1

---------------
Postgres95 1.02                 Thu Aug  1 18:00:00 EDT 1996
-------------------------------------------------------------

Source code maintainenance and development
 * worldwide team of volunteers
 * the source tree now in CVS at ftp.ki.net
 * developers mailing list - pg95-dev@ki.net
---------------

yeesh ... now *that* is old ... 4.5 years and growing ...



Re: Re: Why PostgreSQL is not that popular as MySQL?

From
Tom Lane
Date:
Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com> writes:
> Postgres, yes.  PostgreSQL, no.  PostgreSQL was a new project with
> Postgres95 as a starting point.  Postgres95 was an attempt to put an
> SQL front-end on Postgres.

Right; original Postgres used a query language called "POSTQUEL",
which was sort of like SQL but not compatible.

> AFAIK, most all of the Postgres code was jettisoned early on for
> performance reasons.  That makes PostgreSQL roughly five years old,
> code-wise.

This I dispute.  A lot of the core functionality has a very traceable
lineage back to original Postgres; even though some details of the code
may have been revised pretty heavily, the algorithms and design
decisions remain.  This has good points and bad points ;-) ... but
it's absolutely not true that Postgres95 threw away the existing code
and started over.  As you said yourself, it was more of a question of
sticking a new frontend (ie, parser) on the existing database engine.

            regards, tom lane

Re: Re: Why PostgreSQL is not that popular as MySQL?

From
"rob"
Date:
MySQL simply did a better job of marketing themselves to an audience that
typically doesn't know SQL or understand relational databases.  MySQL
focuses on speed as it's primary asset.  Integration with quick growing
languages (like PHP) helped a lot too.  MySQL is also the product of an
existing software company that employed basic marketing principles early in
the game.

Most of the web based projects I have found were obviously written by (good)
programmers that just didn't have a grasp of relational data models.  They
just needed a quick & easy way to store large tables of information.
(Berkley DBM's only go so far) Given that this "less DB savvy" audience
didn't understand relational databases, things like triggers and decent SQL
support don't strike them as important as speed.

MySQL is a good migration path for xBase, and the multitude of DBM based
scripts that were dominate a few years ago.  PostgreSQL is the only path for
someone that intends to use relational design in their applications.  MySQL
doesn't even come close.

The bottom line is that the marketing of PostgreSQL is not even close to
that of MySQL.  Thank god the code, community and support doesn't follow
suit!

my 2 cents

--rob



----- Original Message -----
From: "The Hermit Hacker" <scrappy@hub.org>
To: "Ronald Cole" <ronald@forte-intl.com>
Cc: <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2000 3:08 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Why PostgreSQL is not that popular as MySQL?


> On 29 Nov 2000, Ronald Cole wrote:
>
> > Raymond Chui <raymond.chui@noaa.gov> writes:
> > > I am just start look at PostgreSQL for our Redhat Linux.
> > > I am wonder why most of people choose MySQL in Linux
> > > world rather than PostgreSQL? PostgreSQL has 15 years
> > > history (I never know that before) which is much longer
> > > than MySQL. Also PostgreSQL supports a lot of things
> > > which MySQL has not support yet.
> >
> > Postgres, yes.  PostgreSQL, no.  PostgreSQL was a new project with
> > Postgres95 as a starting point.  Postgres95 was an attempt to put an
> > SQL front-end on Postgres.  AFAIK, most all of the Postgres code was
> > jettisoned early on for performance reasons.  That makes PostgreSQL
> > roughly five years old, code-wise.
> >
> > I still have a Postgres95 tree in CVS before the PostgreSQL fork to
> > prove it, too!  ;)
>
> so do we :)  way way back when:
>
> RCS file: /home/projects/pgsql/cvsroot/pgsql/HISTORY,v
> Working file: HISTORY
> head: 1.79
> branch:
> locks: strict
> access list:
> symbolic names:
>         REL7_0_PATCHES: 1.70.0.2
>         REL7_0: 1.70
>         REL6_5_PATCHES: 1.52.0.2
>         REL6_5: 1.52
>         REL6_4: 1.44.0.2
>         release-6-3: 1.33
>         SUPPORT: 1.1.1.1
>         PG95-DIST: 1.1.1
>
> ---------------
> Postgres95 1.02                 Thu Aug  1 18:00:00 EDT 1996
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Source code maintainenance and development
>  * worldwide team of volunteers
>  * the source tree now in CVS at ftp.ki.net
>  * developers mailing list - pg95-dev@ki.net
> ---------------
>
> yeesh ... now *that* is old ... 4.5 years and growing ...
>
>
>


Re: Re: Re: Why PostgreSQL is not that popular as MySQL?

From
Bruce Momjian
Date:
> The bottom line is that the marketing of PostgreSQL is not even close to
> that of MySQL.  Thank god the code, community and support doesn't follow
> suit!

I think MySQL got a big start by migrating mSQL users years ago and
having a compatibility module for mSQL.

--
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Re: Why PostgreSQL is not that popular as MySQL?

From
Elmar Haneke
Date:

Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
> > The bottom line is that the marketing of PostgreSQL is not even close to
> > that of MySQL.  Thank god the code, community and support doesn't follow
> > suit!
>
> I think MySQL got a big start by migrating mSQL users years ago and
> having a compatibility module for mSQL.

One great advantage of mySQL (and mSQL) ist the low
connection-overhead. Especially in mSQL this was an explicit
design-goal.

In CGI-based WEB-environments it is very important that the time spent
for connecting the database is as low as possible. Time wasted there
cannot be autweight by fast SELECTS since many CGI do only very few
SQL-statements.

Using later WEB-techniques (as e.g. Servlets or Fast-CGI) this part
becomes less important since an single DB-connection can be kept open
across multiple WWW-requests. In applications where the connection is
kept open for a long time the connection overhead becomes
insignificant.

Elmar