Re: Wikipedia on Postgres (was Re: postgresql vs mysql)

On 2/22/07, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake escribió:
> > Andrej Ricnik-Bay wrote:
> > > On 2/23/07, Jim Nasby <decibel(at)decibel(dot)org> wrote:
> > >> That depends greatly on what you're doing with it. Generally, as soon
> > >> as you start throwing a multi-user workload at it, MySQL stops
> > >> scaling. http://tweakers.net recently did a study on that.
> > > I think I recall that wikipedia uses MySQL ... they get quite a few
> > > hits, too, I believe.
> >
> > And outages if you watch :)
>
> Does this mean that we believe the Wikipedia would not suffer any
> outages if it ran on Postgres?
>
> How is the Postgres port of the Wikipedia doing this days anyway? Is it
> in a shape where one would consider it "competitive"?
>

I use mediawiki with postgres and it works fine, except for a bug
regarding timestamps. That bug is due to mysqlism of the code. Once
that's fixed, it will be ready as far as I'm concerned.

<editorial>There have been some tragic and embarrassing data losses by
some big sites that should know better because they used mysql without
the heroic measures that are needed to make it safe. I don't care
that much that big sites use it, big sites start small and don't
always start with the best tools. Once started, it's hard to switch
over to better tools. If you used enough volkswagen beetles you could
move the same number of passengers on the same routes as Greyhound
does with buses, but that doesn't mean they are the right
tool.</editorial>

- Ian