Re: PG vs MySQL

On Mon, 29 Mar 2004, Mike Nolan wrote:

> I know of an ISP who has a large number of customers (in excess of 400)
> running similar small (probably under 100MB each) MySQL databases. Since
> I know each customer has access only to his own data, I assume it is
> implemented using a different database for each customer. Whether or not
> it is on one or several machines is a detail I'm not sure of.

Note that we are actually talking about two different things here ... I
have a server with 165 databases running on it for clients ... no client
can access another clients database, as access is restricted to a user
created specifically for the client that owns the database, as well as the
IP that they will be connecting from ...

Now, that doesn't preclude clients from seeing the names of another
clients database using \l, but unless there is gross mis-management of the
pg_hba.conf, seeing the names of other databases doesn't give other
clients any benefits ...

> Without knowing much about how pg uses the pg_hba.conf file, I don't
> know what problems porting that ISP to pg might raise, I only cite it as
> an example of an extreme case that might not have been anticipated and
> thus possibly an inherent limit in the pg_hba.conf method.

To be honest, I can't see much in the way of issues with migrating the
above scenario from MySQL -> PostgreSQL ... other then the obvious
migration of table structures and data, but there are more then enough
scripts out here for mysql2pg conversion ...

> I think it is possible to discuss MySQL features in comparison to pg
> without getting into an Annie Oakley/Frank Butler-style argument here.

Agreed, else I wouldn't have jump'd in ... you've brought up a couple of
points that I've raised on the -hackers list ... but, I don't consider
them to be 'high priority' issues, mainly because there is no security
reasons to adopt a 'hide it all' policy similar to MySQL ...

In fact, I'd almost go to the extent of saying that MySQL model of hiding
things would result in a slightly more lazy admin maintaining the server,
since they would be relying more on MySQL to provide security for them,
instead of them providing it themselves ... we (PgSQL) tend to be more
aware of our servers *because* we have to think about whether we've setup
the security properly ...

----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy(at)hub(dot)org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664