Re: Differences between postgres and mysql

>>>>> "TL" == Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:

TL> Mike Nolan <nolan(at)gw(dot)tssi(dot)com> writes:
>> MySQL's poor implementation of the 'alter table' process.

TL> Interesting you should say that, because for years we were getting beat
TL> up regularly about how poor our ALTER capabilities were compared to
TL> MySQL's. Have we really passed them up in ALTER flexibility? Or is
TL> there some other limitation you are thinking of?

I think we get beat up on the things you can (rather cannot) ALTER. I
think mysql is getting beat up on how they implement the ALTER. From
my readings earlier on this list, it seems that the entire backend
file(s) are copied upon alter, and all indexes rebuilt. That would be
a major PITA for a large database (not that you'd have one all that
large in mysql anyhow ;-))

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