Re: PostgreSQL 8.1 vs. MySQL 5.0?

Hi everyone,

I've just got back from LinuxWorld in London and seeing this thread thought
I would share my experience of the MySQL stand - if you are of a delicate
dispostion, please look away now. I basically asked them straight up why I
should use MySQL instead of PostgreSQL and was quite surprised by the
result, mainly since it was not done on features but more on FUD. The basic
message was this:

- MySQL is the most popular open source database, with over 6m
"enterprise"
installs, with a large company supporting it. PostgreSQL is run by a
very
small community of developers.

- MySQL can be clustered (This was later retracted when I mentioned
I
needed something that would work on large tables, as apparently
their
clustering only works in RAM and so will fail on large queries and
queries
that use a lot of joins).

- All the companies that have tried to operate by selling PostgreSQL
support
services have gone bankrupt, except for EnterpriseDB.

- PostgreSQL doesn't have row level locking.

And this last comment really took the biscuit - I really hope that the none
of the core team read this and decide to throw in the towel:

"MySQL has the biggest collection of database experts... Open source
people
don't know how to write databases"

So all in all, to say I was upset by some of these comments was an
understatement. To all the people I spoke to on the PostgreSQL stand, I hope
I did it in a way that made them feel empowered to go and try the PostgreSQL
for their own applications by mentioning its benefits, and not by spreading
FUD about its competition.

Mark.

------------------------
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T: +44 (0)1752 791021
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On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 11:42:57PM +0100, Mark Cave-Ayland wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I've just got back from LinuxWorld in London and seeing this thread
> thought I would share my experience of the MySQL stand - if you are
> of a delicate dispostion, please look away now. I basically asked
> them straight up why I should use MySQL instead of PostgreSQL and
> was quite surprised by the result, mainly since it was not done on
> features but more on FUD. The basic message was this:

[FUD elided]

Did you happen to get names and quotes for any of these? As in, "On
October 1, 2005, at LinuxWorld London, Foo McBar said, ' ... '"

One way to keep the FUD to a minimum is to hold the FUDster personally
responsible for it.

Cheers,
D
--
David Fetter david(at)fetter(dot)org http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 510 893 6100 mobile: +1 415 235 3778

Remember to vote!

> - All the companies that have tried to operate by selling PostgreSQL
>support
> services have gone bankrupt, except for EnterpriseDB.
>
>

Oh the irony....

Command Prompt, Inc...

Doing PostgreSQL since 1997.
Profitable since 1997.
No debt since 1997.

Oh... and of course, no outside Vulture Capitalists either.

Not to mention Pervasive although new to PostgreSQL has been around a
LONG time.

Stupid is as stupid does I guess.

Joshua D. Drake

--
Your PostgreSQL solutions company - Command Prompt, Inc. 1.800.492.2240
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Programming, 24x7 support
Managed Services, Shared and Dedicated Hosting
Co-Authors: plPHP, plPerlNG - http://www.commandprompt.com/

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
>> - All the companies that have tried to operate by selling PostgreSQL
>> support services have gone bankrupt, except for EnterpriseDB.

> Oh the irony....

Actually, AFAIR the *only* such company that's gone under was Great
Bridge; and in their case it wasn't that there wasn't a viable business
case, it was that the board of directors got cold feet during the 2001
dot-com bust, and refused to continue putting money into it according
to the original business plan. Other longtime supporters such as SRA
and PostgreSQL Inc are still around; and while Red Hat is not being as
vocal about it as they once were, they are still paying me to work on
Postgres.

So, yeah, the above claim is just FUD. It'd be interesting to ask some
hard questions about exactly how solid MySQL AB's finances are ... and
how many other support options users will have if they go under.

regards, tom lane

>So, yeah, the above claim is just FUD. It'd be interesting to ask some
>hard questions about exactly how solid MySQL AB's finances are ... and
>how many other support options users will have if they go under.
>
>
Well I can say that Command Prompt will support their migration to
PostgreSQL fully :)

> regards, tom lane
>
>

--
Your PostgreSQL solutions company - Command Prompt, Inc. 1.800.492.2240
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Programming, 24x7 support
Managed Services, Shared and Dedicated Hosting
Co-Authors: plPHP, plPerlNG - http://www.commandprompt.com/

On Thu, 2005-10-06 at 23:00 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:

> So, yeah, the above claim is just FUD. It'd be interesting to ask some
> hard questions about exactly how solid MySQL AB's finances are ... and
> how many other support options users will have if they go under.

A possibly more likely and scary option for their users is that MySQL
would just get bought out. I'm sure support wouldn't cost much per CPU
per server per year, at least at first...

IBM have previously bought Informix (who bought Illustra, RedBrick,
Cloudscape) and Oracle have previously bought DEC RDB, so both have
track record of successful competitor take-overs. None of those take-
overs has led to a product actually surviving. Oracle have spent time
running down Siebel, only to completely U-turn and buy them. Of course,
Sybase and CA might get in there first, both of whom also have
successful take-overs of RDBMS companies under their belts.

Oracle's licence sales just flat-lined in their last quarter, share
price down 4%. Their strategy is clearly one of enterprise application
dominance now.

But no, Mark, I'm not worried by the FUD. It just means there's nothing
real for them to throw at PostgreSQL.

Best Regards, Simon Riggs

In this thread, no one has mentioned their dual license, which I think of
as more duplicitous than dual. Neither free as in freedom nor free as in
beer, really.

pgsql-general-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org wrote on 10/07/2005 12:45:39 PM:

> On Thu, 2005-10-06 at 23:00 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>
> > So, yeah, the above claim is just FUD. It'd be interesting to ask some
> > hard questions about exactly how solid MySQL AB's finances are ... and
> > how many other support options users will have if they go under.
>
> A possibly more likely and scary option for their users is that MySQL
> would just get bought out. I'm sure support wouldn't cost much per CPU
> per server per year, at least at first...
>
> IBM have previously bought Informix (who bought Illustra, RedBrick,
> Cloudscape) and Oracle have previously bought DEC RDB, so both have
> track record of successful competitor take-overs. None of those take-
> overs has led to a product actually surviving. Oracle have spent time
> running down Siebel, only to completely U-turn and buy them. Of course,
> Sybase and CA might get in there first, both of whom also have
> successful take-overs of RDBMS companies under their belts.
>
> Oracle's licence sales just flat-lined in their last quarter, share
> price down 4%. Their strategy is clearly one of enterprise application
> dominance now.
>
> But no, Mark, I'm not worried by the FUD. It just means there's nothing
> real for them to throw at PostgreSQL.
>
> Best Regards, Simon Riggs
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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>IBM have previously bought Informix (who bought Illustra, RedBrick,
>Cloudscape) .... None of those take-
>overs has led to a product actually surviving.
>
>

Thats not exactly true - Cloudscape was just given to Apache, and is now
opensourced under the name "Derby"
http://db.apache.org/derby/

Suddenly, Hypersonic SQL http://www.hsqldb.org/ (which also works
wonderfully for small databases - nobody would claim that these can
scale like PostgreSQL)
has a bunch of competition.

Dan

--
****************************
Daniel Armbrust
Biomedical Informatics
Mayo Clinic Rochester
daniel.armbrust(at)mayo.edu
http://informatics.mayo.edu/

> But no, Mark, I'm not worried by the FUD. It just means there's nothing
> real for them to throw at PostgreSQL.

This just appeared on slashdot...

MySQL To Be Ikea Of The Database Market
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/07/1224213&from=rss

From the linked article...

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=9231B8BD-3788-4DB2-B85F-707E75857B58

While new entrants into the open source database market, such as
EnterpriseDB and Pervasive Software, have made no secret of their
intentions to chase Oracle's market share, Mr Mickos said MySQL is happy
to leave them to it.

"We are thankful that they are there to define the market, there is no
product if you're the only vendor," he said. "Pervasive and EnterpriseDB
are going up against Oracle. We don't want to be in that space, we don't
want to take the heat from Oracle. If you're working in a zoo you don't
want to be the one who has to brush the teeth of the lion."

On 10/7/05, Philip Hallstrom <postgresql(at)philip(dot)pjkh(dot)com> wrote:
> > But no, Mark, I'm not worried by the FUD. It just means there's nothing
> > real for them to throw at PostgreSQL.
>
> This just appeared on slashdot...
>
> MySQL To Be Ikea Of The Database Market
> http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/07/1224213&from=rss
>
> From the linked article...
>
> http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=9231B8BD-3788-4DB2-B85F-707E75857B58
>
> While new entrants into the open source database market, such as
> EnterpriseDB and Pervasive Software, have made no secret of their
> intentions to chase Oracle's market share, Mr Mickos said MySQL is happy
> to leave them to it.
>
> "We are thankful that they are there to define the market, there is no
> product if you're the only vendor," he said. "Pervasive and EnterpriseDB
> are going up against Oracle. We don't want to be in that space, we don't
> want to take the heat from Oracle. If you're working in a zoo you don't
> want to be the one who has to brush the teeth of the lion."

And this just in (via another post on this list):

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-07-2005/0004163873&EDATE=
http://www.oracle.com/innodb/index.html

Oracle acquires Innobase, which is the company behind the InnoDB table
bit of MySQL, i.e. the engine with the foreign keys, transactions and
all that.

Is there a shortage of lion toothpaste in Sweden or something?

Ian Barwick

On Fri, 2005-10-07 at 13:32 -0500, Dan Armbrust wrote:
> >IBM have previously bought Informix (who bought Illustra, RedBrick,
> >Cloudscape) .... None of those take-
> >overs has led to a product actually surviving.
> >

> Thats not exactly true - Cloudscape was just given to Apache, and is now
> opensourced under the name "Derby"
> http://db.apache.org/derby/

Both the things we have said are true.

IBM bought Informix, who had bought Cloudscape. *Then* they gave it away
to Apache, since it is probably at about 4 years behind PostgreSQL at
current development rates on PostgreSQL.

Best Regards, Simon Riggs

On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 11:42:57PM +0100, Mark Cave-Ayland wrote:
> - All the companies that have tried to operate by selling PostgreSQL
> support
> services have gone bankrupt, except for EnterpriseDB.

Damn, guess I need to update my resume...
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461

On Thu, 2005-10-06 at 17:42, Mark Cave-Ayland wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I've just got back from LinuxWorld in London and seeing this thread thought
> I would share my experience of the MySQL stand - if you are of a delicate
> dispostion, please look away now. I basically asked them straight up why I
> should use MySQL instead of PostgreSQL and was quite surprised by the
> result, mainly since it was not done on features but more on FUD. The basic
> message was this:

This is sad. In the past, the FUD efforts of MySQL AB were really quite
shameful. I had thought we had moved past that phase, with the MySQL
folks understanding that bad mouthing PostgreSQL is a losing proposition
in the long run, because people don't like being lied to, and get
especially upset when they've dedicated resources to a project only to
find out that the technology they paid for can't do the job, and the
technology they were told couldn't do the job can. Sigh.

> - MySQL is the most popular open source database, with over 6m
> "enterprise"
> installs, with a large company supporting it. PostgreSQL is run by a
> very
> small community of developers.

Actually, the same could be said of Samba and Apache. I'll take one Tom
Lane or Jan Wieck or (all the other postgresql hackers go here) over
1,000 MySQL hackers.

I wonder what kind of result we would get if we compared something like
"new lines of code per month / year" of the two projects....

>
> - PostgreSQL doesn't have row level locking.

Now that's rich.

> And this last comment really took the biscuit - I really hope that the none
> of the core team read this and decide to throw in the towel:
>
> "MySQL has the biggest collection of database experts... Open source
> people
> don't know how to write databases"

The saddest part is the people who hear this and believe it.

On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 09:51:48AM -0500, Scott Marlowe wrote:
> I'll take one Tom Lane or Jan Wieck or (all the other postgresql
> hackers go here) over 1,000 MySQL hackers.

Likewise. They probably don't hear it enough, so I hope they're
aware that some of us have a great deal of respect for both their
technical abilities and the professionalism with which they run the
project. I hope their employers appreciate what they've got.

--
Michael Fuhr

On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 09:51:48AM -0500, Scott Marlowe wrote:
> Actually, the same could be said of Samba and Apache. I'll take one Tom
> Lane or Jan Wieck or (all the other postgresql hackers go here) over
> 1,000 MySQL hackers.
>
> I wonder what kind of result we would get if we compared something like
> "new lines of code per month / year" of the two projects....

Well, shouldn't be too hard to figure that out if someone's so
inclined. I know kloc numbers have been posted for the past several
versions of PostgreSQL; someone would just need to do the same for
MySQL.

Of course, it gets a bit tricky, since you have to define what is
actually MySQL code... ie, do you count InnoDB stuff?
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461

On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 09:20:47AM -0600, Michael Fuhr wrote:
> project. I hope their employers appreciate what they've got.

Well, I can tell you that Afilias does.

A

--
Andrew Sullivan | ajs(at)crankycanuck(dot)ca
The fact that technology doesn't work is no bar to success in the marketplace.
--Philip Greenspun

Michael Fuhr wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 09:51:48AM -0500, Scott Marlowe wrote:
>
>>I'll take one Tom Lane or Jan Wieck or (all the other postgresql
>>hackers go here) over 1,000 MySQL hackers.
>
> ... I hope their employers appreciate what they've got.

Is there a good way of telling their employers that _their_
customers appreciate what they are doing too? I.e. any way
to let Red Hat know that they're a platform the company I'm
at recommends to our customers largely because of the
postgresql support we assume they're capable of thanks to Tom?