Re: Prestige users

On Wed, 5 May 2004, Christopher Browne wrote:

> The world rejoiced as bruce(at)centerstage(dot)com (Bruce) wrote:
> > We've got a raging debate going on now on whether we should move from
> > a Foxpro back end to either PostgreSQL or MySQL.
> >
> > It's an accounting application and I feel that Postgres would be the
> > better choice. Some other people (like my boss) thinks that MySQL
> > would be better choice. His reasoning is that MySQL gets more
> > publicity so it must be better. He says that since the Sabre airline
> > reservation system and Yahoo run with MySQL, they are the best. Period.
>
> I have contacts at Sabre (used to work there, back when they were a
> big company); they refuse to say a word about what MySQL is getting
> used for.
>
> Furthermore, there is NO reason to imagine that Sabre has migrated
> from IMS to MySQL. That would be just plain silly. Their online
> system, STIN, supports not merely tens of thousands but hundreds of
> thousands of concurrent users; it's the sort of application that
> _STILL_ involves the use of hand-written IBM 370 assembly code.

Having met some of the sabre guys at a dinner a few years ago, and having
heard the funny stories of how clusters of dozens and dozens of unix boxes
running oracle kept falling over in testing trying to handle the same load
as their 12 sysplexed / load balanced 360 series mainframes (6 in front, 6
in back) I can not imagine sabre running their reservation system on MySQL
either.

Yahoo uses Oracle for all their financials (this from an insider friend
who knows the score) and MySQL for content management.

Choosing MySQL for an accounting app is like doing the math to send an
orbiter to mars in yards, then converting it to meters where 1Yard=1Meter.