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What kinds of problems did it have? Why is it so difficult to support MySQL and Postgres at the same time, and why would MySQL be prioritised?

zimpenfish 9y ago
> why would MySQL be prioritised? "Because it's easier to slap a system together on MySQL". Which, to be fair, it is but that's not a good thing when you're talking about data.
- seanwilson 9y ago
  Why is it easier though?
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    Because it was a lot easier to deal with permissions, you could write "SQL" rather than SQL, it was very lax with SQL keywords as table names (ie. you could create a table called 'user'), replication didn't involve selling your soul to several devils, etc. It's like Rails - it's easy to slap something up but once you start using it in anger, it requires all the handholding and effort.
- e12e 9y ago
  Probably not that - but Ghost was born in many ways as "a better wordpress" (or a not batshit crazy mess of old code and not properly namespaced plugins and themes). The model it replaces/improves on is self-host on shared-hosting web hosts. That used to be php and mysql - I guess they kept mysql, even if nodejs doesn't lend itself to the same type of shared hosting as php does (in fact, neither does php, but that's a battle for another day). Anyway, many hosting services will throw in a database instance on a more-or-less well-managed mysql cluster - at a minimum there might be some semi-regular backups of the database, with some automation for doing restores (and with more than a bit of luck, they'll keep snapshots, so that the sql injection that wiped your database haven't resulted in all-empty backups by the time you realize). I don't think it makes much sense, but I doubt it is because "postgres is hard, mysql is easy".
erisds 9y ago
I answered this question in as much detail as possible in the blog post I wrote at the time (which was also linked in the above comment) https://dev.ghost.org/dropping-support-for-postgresql/ https://dev.ghost.org/dropping-support-for-postgresql/

zimpenfish 9y ago

> why would MySQL be prioritised? "Because it's easier to slap a system together on MySQL". Which, to be fair, it is but that's not a good thing when you're talking about data.

seanwilson 9y ago
Why is it easier though?
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  Because it was a lot easier to deal with permissions, you could write "SQL" rather than SQL, it was very lax with SQL keywords as table names (ie. you could create a table called 'user'), replication didn't involve selling your soul to several devils, etc. It's like Rails - it's easy to slap something up but once you start using it in anger, it requires all the handholding and effort.
e12e 9y ago
Probably not that - but Ghost was born in many ways as "a better wordpress" (or a not batshit crazy mess of old code and not properly namespaced plugins and themes). The model it replaces/improves on is self-host on shared-hosting web hosts. That used to be php and mysql - I guess they kept mysql, even if nodejs doesn't lend itself to the same type of shared hosting as php does (in fact, neither does php, but that's a battle for another day). Anyway, many hosting services will throw in a database instance on a more-or-less well-managed mysql cluster - at a minimum there might be some semi-regular backups of the database, with some automation for doing restores (and with more than a bit of luck, they'll keep snapshots, so that the sql injection that wiped your database haven't resulted in all-empty backups by the time you realize). I don't think it makes much sense, but I doubt it is because "postgres is hard, mysql is easy".

erisds 9y ago

I answered this question in as much detail as possible in the blog post I wrote at the time (which was also linked in the above comment) https://dev.ghost.org/dropping-support-for-postgresql/ https://dev.ghost.org/dropping-support-for-postgresql/