Re: DBMS Engines and Performance

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 11:36:52AM -0800, Rich Shepard wrote:
> However, what puzzles me is this statement: "PostgreSQL has continued to
> fall behind other database engines in both performance and features, so I
> don't see compelling reason to work on it in my very limited free time."

While the claim is utter bosh, what is probably true is that an
application that has been designed exclusively to work well with
MySQL will just not work very well with Postgres. That's my
experience, in any case.

Generally, when you get an application that was designed exclusively
to work with MySQL, they're using all the furry little bits in MySQL
that aren't really very SQL-like. Then, the port is commenced, and
the developers discover that many of the MySQL tricks aren't really
SQL at all, and that they have a bunch of new syntax to learn.
Instead of regarding this as a failing of MySQL to implement
consistently the standard SQL, such developers often regard their
discovery of proof that only MySQL is a good product, that everything
else is garbage, and that all those other systems should just be
ignored.

The alternative approach is that the developers try to come up with
Yet Another Abstraction Layer, so that they can leave the code in
their system that is there to deal with the huge numbers of
historically missing features in MySQL. Even as MySQL has added some
of those features, the application designers haven't caught up.

The above is not universally true, but I have seen or read such
sentiments often enough to realise that there are plenty of
application developers who don't know anything about their database
technology.

A

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