Re: Need Some Recent Information on the Differences between Postgres and MySql

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 7:04 PM, Wang, Mary Y <mary(dot)y(dot)wang(at)boeing(dot)com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to find some write-ups about the differences between Postgres and
> MySql.  A lot of stuff showed up on Google, but most of them are old.
> I saw this wiki over here
> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Why_PostgreSQL_Instead_of_MySQL_2009 and
> plan to watch a recent webcast on PostgreSQL vs. MySQL that was offered by
> EnterpriseDB.
>
> Are there any other most recent summaries on the differences between
> Postgres and MySql?

The philosophical difference tends to be that MySQL tends to lean
towards being easier to use, and when it comes to a choice between
absolutely "correct" operation and "just do it" MySQL will just do it.
PostgreSQL tends to throw errors more often if what you're asking it
to do is not explicitly correct.

For instant, by default, this will work in mysql:

create table test (i int);
insert into test (i) values ('');

with a warning, but will produce an error in most modern versions of pgsql.

Slowly, MySQL becomes more standards compliant while pgsql gets easier
to use, but generally the differences like this remain pretty common.