Re: have you seen this?

On May 27, 2004, at 3:57 PM, Alexey Borzov wrote:

>
>>> As the PostgreSQL advocacy group thinks that PHP programmers are
>>> among
>>> their *main* target audience, may I humbly suggest answering the
>>> questions that are asked instead of the ones that are not?
>> Well, the first question I would ask *us* is whether or not PHP
>> programmers *are* among our main targets for advocacy. Based on my
>> experience at PHPCon, I would say that 80% of PHP coders would be
>> well served by SQLite -- MySQL is more powerful than they need or
>> want, let alone us.
>
> That 80% of PHP coders do *not* go to conferences and are indeed best
> served by SQLite. But I am speaking about the other 20%, and if some
> of them switch that'll be extremely good:
> * advocacy within the community
> * quality web apllications that support PostgreSQL
>

From our experience (dotgeek.org around 1000 PHP Developers hosted, no
MySQL but only PostgreSQL/SQLite) users are still hocked with MySQL for
the ease of use
and phpmyadmin. Many are moving with pleasure and found postgresql as a
pleasant surprise. They however cry loud more for the interface
problems then anything else.

As SQLite doesn't have a lot of frontends which works as well as
phpmyadmin isn't that popular at the moment.

>> Not that I'm writing off the PHP community. Given PostgreSQL's
>> powerful functions, views, and other in-database code, it makes a
>> really dynamic pairing with a lightweight scripting language like PHP
>> -- one which I've used to great effect. But I think that the target
>> audience for this message is not necessarily existing PHP jockeys,
>> but rather coders in client-side languages, and database designers
>> used to Oracle and MSSQL, looking to move to the web.
>
> OK, let's replace "PHP developers" by "current MySQL users". My point
> being, that most of them already know about features, and some of them
> even *want* these features. While there are some real problems
> preventing them from switching (lack of Win32 port, for instance),
> there also are some imagined ones and the natural aversion to change.

Right, the simply don't like to change, not even to SQLite. problem is,
there are few applications working with postgresql and tons working
with php/mysql.

>
>>> The most successful (most quoted) advocacy articles I remember were
>>> the
>>> once from OpenACS (Why not MySQL?) and sql-info.de (MySQL gotchas).
>>> To
>>> make people look at PostgreSQL you should concentrate on why MySQL is
>>> *bad*, to create a sense of insecurity in its users. That is the
>>> propaganda that works.
>> If you really want to reach the PHP coders where they live, though,
>> just point out MySQL's licensing policy. If they want to use MySQL
>> and *not* open-source their entire site, then they have to cough up
>> $300 to $500US to MySQL AB as a commercial license, and pay for *each
>> server* they use. That's a persuasive reason to switch to
>> PostgreSQL. You can also point out that MySQL AB has changed the
>> MySQL license 3 times since 2.0; what's to keep them from closing it
>> entirely, and eliminating the Open Source version, if they feel it
>> will be profitable?
>
> Yes, and that is precisely the approach I called "creating a sense of
> insecurity". "You can get fired for choosing MySQL", "what happens
> when MySQL AB goes bankrupt?", etc. :]

I don't think that the majority of developers are concerned about that.
The licensing leaves many developers untouched as long as they don't
mess with MySQL Libs.
MySQL advocacy is also very strong in reassuring the users.

>
> The recent article on licensing problems was noticed *very* well.
>
> I'd like to suggest doing the same things in technical perspective:
> why implementing the functionality on client side is *bad*, length of
> MySQL's release cycles, creating some "switching" stories, this kind
> of stuff.
>

I think that devoting some resources (e.g. inviting more people to
help) with the phppgadmin tool would be a great start.

Cheers
David Costa