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In a world where Postgres exists, and Microsoft SQL Server Express is supported on Linux, what's the advantage of using MySQL?

by douche 9y ago

my_ghola 9y ago
Inertia and being good enough at the jobs thrown at it. Everyone for whom MySQL is not enough just move to Postgres and most open source ORM's support both so it's mostly a non issue. At a job I was told we would use Postgres very very shortly before release. All I had to do is change configuration settings and run a command, and that was 5 years ago.
SwellJoe 9y ago
Lots of reasons why I still use it: - MySQL/MariaDB are much better tested for almost every OSS web app and framework I use. It may be the only database that is official and thoroughly supported. If I want to interoperate on the same DB across many applications, MySQL/MariaDB is the lingua franca. - It's fast enough. The vast majority of applications never need to scale beyond a few hundred requests per second. Any database on nearly any hardware with sufficient memory will do this. - Aurora. Scale up automagically (not infinitely, but pretty easily) when you do find yourself with an app that needs to scale a lot and fast. - It's fine. Sure, PostgreSQL does a number of things better (though I'd wager some of the reasons MySQL is getting slower for some workloads is because it is now doing some of the things PostgreSQL has done for a while, and they require more resources; features have a cost). If I were weighing out the pros and cons in isolation, I'd pick PostgreSQL. But, I'm not. I'm building things on top of other things, and those other things were built with MySQL. when MySQL was faster than PostgreSQL I didn't choose it because of its speed (I used to use PostgreSQL for my company website, but migrated to MySQL about ten years ago). MySQL/MariaDB may not be better, but they're good enough. MySQL and PostgreSQL have converged in terms of features and performance to be reasonable substitutes for each other.
- elmigranto 9y ago
  > MySQL and PostgreSQL have converged in terms of features and performance Is there CTEs in MySQL yet? What about binary JSON and indexes on that? How is implementing arrays and aggregate functions beyond simple arithmetic going? Or maybe there is a way to write triggers in Python or JS if I want some performant number crunching with ACID guarantees? Can DDL statements be rolled back, so I wouldn't have to pull my hair out during development after running migration I'm working on, if it happens to have a typo?
  - EwanToo 9y ago
    CTEs are in MySQL 8 https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/with.html https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/with.html

In a world where Postgres exists, and Microsoft SQL Server Express is supported on Linux, what's the advantage of using MySQL?

by douche 9y ago

In a world where Postgres exists, and Microsoft SQL Server Express is supported on Linux, what's the advantage of using MySQL?

my_ghola 9y ago

Inertia and being good enough at the jobs thrown at it. Everyone for whom MySQL is not enough just move to Postgres and most open source ORM's support both so it's mostly a non issue. At a job I was told we would use Postgres very very shortly before release. All I had to do is change configuration settings and run a command, and that was 5 years ago.

SwellJoe 9y ago

Lots of reasons why I still use it: - MySQL/MariaDB are much better tested for almost every OSS web app and framework I use. It may be the only database that is official and thoroughly supported. If I want to interoperate on the same DB across many applications, MySQL/MariaDB is the lingua franca. - It's fast enough. The vast majority of applications never need to scale beyond a few hundred requests per second. Any database on nearly any hardware with sufficient memory will do this. - Aurora. Scale up automagically (not infinitely, but pretty easily) when you do find yourself with an app that needs to scale a lot and fast. - It's fine. Sure, PostgreSQL does a number of things better (though I'd wager some of the reasons MySQL is getting slower for some workloads is because it is now doing some of the things PostgreSQL has done for a while, and they require more resources; features have a cost). If I were weighing out the pros and cons in isolation, I'd pick PostgreSQL. But, I'm not. I'm building things on top of other things, and those other things were built with MySQL. when MySQL was faster than PostgreSQL I didn't choose it because of its speed (I used to use PostgreSQL for my company website, but migrated to MySQL about ten years ago). MySQL/MariaDB may not be better, but they're good enough. MySQL and PostgreSQL have converged in terms of features and performance to be reasonable substitutes for each other.

elmigranto 9y ago
> MySQL and PostgreSQL have converged in terms of features and performance Is there CTEs in MySQL yet? What about binary JSON and indexes on that? How is implementing arrays and aggregate functions beyond simple arithmetic going? Or maybe there is a way to write triggers in Python or JS if I want some performant number crunching with ACID guarantees? Can DDL statements be rolled back, so I wouldn't have to pull my hair out during development after running migration I'm working on, if it happens to have a typo?
- EwanToo 9y ago
  CTEs are in MySQL 8 https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/with.html https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/with.html