Re: PostgreSQL 8.1 vs. MySQL 5.0?

On Wed, 2005-10-05 at 23:41, Tom Lane wrote:
> "Joshua D. Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
> > On Wed, 2005-10-05 at 18:37 -0700, CSN wrote:
> >> Just so I know (and am armed ;) ), are there any new
> >> comparable features in MySQL 5.0 that aren't in
> >> PostgreSQL up to the forthcoming 8.1? AFAIK, PG just
> >> lacks updatable views (which are on the TODO).
> >>
> >> MySQL 5.0 new features
> >> http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/mysql-5-0-nutshell.html
>
> > Well "IF" they are being completely honest, we don't have XA
> > and we don't have an "instance manager" but of course who really needs
> > one?
>
> We don't have XA built into the backend, but if I've been following the
> jdbc list accurately, there's fairly complete XA support for the jdbc
> driver, which should be available in the 8.1 release.
>
> More generally, it's worth making the point that a lot of MySQL's "brand
> new in 5.0" features have been in Postgres for a *long* time, and are
> therefore likely to be both more stable and better-performing than
> MySQL's first cut at them.
>
> (BTW, it sure seems like MySQL 5.0 has been a heckuva long time in
> getting to release status. Has anyone here been following that
> process? Why's it been so painful?)

I've been beta testing 5.0.xx releases and reporting bugs. They're
pretty fast at fixing individual bugs.

Not sure why it's taken so long, really. Maybe they were trying to do
too much at once in one release?

But what really bugs me is that some things that ARE bugs simply aren't
getting fixed and probably won't. Specifically, while mysql understands
fk references made at a table level, it simply ignores, without error,
warning, or notice, fk references made in a column. arg... Very
frustrating. If they just didn't support that syntax it would be much
less bothersome, since I'd try it, get an error, and try the other
syntax. Instead, I spent an afternoon trying to figure out why it
wasn't doing ANYTHING when I declared an FK reference at column level.

Things like that are, sadly, kinda rampant in MySQL.