Re: Thoughs after discussions at OSCON

Andrew Sullivan wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I've been doing some reflecting on some things I saw and heard at the
>OSCON this year, and I thought I'd note them here, more to prime
>discussion than to propose any strong conclusions.
>
>1. The first item I think bears mention is the number of occasions I
>had people ask me whether the project is losing steam, or "losing
>out" to MySQL, or being no threat to Oracle.
>
>
The biggest thing I noticed, from spending some time volunteering at the
booth, was that most people wanted to talk about only one thing:
performance. To me, that shows that the biggest misconception out there
is that PostgreSQL is slow (or even that it is fast, but that's all it's
got going for it). Thus secondly, there is the depressing observation
that the majority of developers haven't a clue what the relational model
is really good for. They want to wring every possible bit of speed out
of a database while piling all sorts of constraints into application
space. That's pretty much the norm for most open source applications I
have seen. In fact, even some specifically PostgreSQL-based applications
are fairly light in their use of constraints and server-side functions.

It's a catch-22: one of the big problems with getting OS developers to
use PostgreSQL's advanced capabilities is that they usually want their
applications to remain compatible with MySQL, rather than limit
potential deployment opportunities. Ironically, it seems to me that if
MySQL gets more sophisticated, allowing real constraints, triggers,
etc... that it will then actually be *easier* to get developers to
switch to PostgreSQL.

Anyway, I am really not too worried about the popularity of PostgreSQL.
Even based on my non-scientific habit of just bringing it up in
conversation, I find there is a lot more recognition of it these past
couple years. The local Linux User group here in South Florida has even
asked me to make a presentation on PostgreSQL.

One of the difficulties with the FUD out there is that if M[a certain
DBMS] claims it has a certain feature, then people just accept it
without question (Any X is as good as anyone else's X). Maybe it's a
good idea to put out some material explaining how much difference there
can be in two different implementations of such a thing as
(views/triggers/procedures/constraints), and the pitfalls that can
happen because of this.

I should say that the second thing people wanted most to discuss was
replication. Again, a feature where often any_x == x, without
differentiation between good or bad implementations.

Regards,

Rick Morris
(NetCompass.us)

(P.S. Had a great time hanging out with everyone; thanks for the warm
welcome.)